Why can’t we steal a few more days from February and add them to August? It’s just one of twelve months, but I would bet half of my most treasured sense memories belong to it. The smell of vanilla ice cream and waffle cones at Round Top in Damariscotta, my uncle’s authoritative voice ringing through the Maine accents, asking for black raspberry. The sound of Damariscotta Lake lapping against our little fishing boat, the gleam of a perch sailing from our hands, and making its dive back into the dark waters. My uncle giving it a score “from the East German judge.” The smell of conditioned leather at the factory seconds store in Skowhegan, Maine, where I’d pick up fresh sneakers for the next school year.
Long days spent just reading, and reading and reading. Learning I could finish a Stephen King book in a day. A big history book in two. Long walks in the muggy night with my dog, sometimes covering four or five miles, stretching to midnight, coming up with inspired phrases to deploy on my first big crush. The feeling of exhilaration as I let a teenage love letter go into the mailbox, trying and largely succeeding to make a young girl become as possessed by the thought of me as I was by her.
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