Dear Lubec,
It is the summer of 1981, and I am living at the Peacock House, painting it white one side at a time. The boards drink it in slowly. By the end of the day my hands smell like paint and salt, and the wind has its say in every brushstroke.
Each morning I go to Cap’s before getting started. Coffee in a thick mug, the same seat when it’s open, the same quiet nods. After I finish, I walk down Water Street toward the cannery, the day not fully awake yet.
Out past the water, Campobello is half there, half not. You keep it that way for a while. Not gone, just waiting.
From here the world feels like something you are telling slowly. The Atlantic takes the distance and keeps only what is close. A gull passes and I hear it before I see anything, just a sound moving through what has not fully arrived.
Then it begins. A thinning. A line where there was none. Campobello comes back the way memory does, without asking, as if it had been there the whole time.
Later, Grand Manan rises. As the day goes on it seems to get closer, though I know it is not moving. Maybe it is the light. Maybe it is just what happens when you stand still long enough.
I go back to the house and climb the ladder again. The paint goes on steady. The boards turn white, brighter each day. It feels like the same work as watching the islands come back. Slow. Patient. Certain in a way you cannot rush.
By evening the sun settles into everything. The islands hold. The distance returns. The house looks a little more like it belongs to you again.
I think I will stay with this a while.
Fondly,