For most people, Christmas is a day. For me, it’s a place. The only home I’ve ever known.
The tranquil, coastal village of Christmas Cove, Maine is a well-kept secret. To be fair, I’m playing fast and loose with the term village as I free my limp braid from under my wool beanie and throttle my lobster boat through the waves and toward home. In truth, Christmas Cove doesn’t have shops, a Main Street or…well, village amenities of any kind, really. Here, life exists at the end of a twelve-mile peninsula, where a perfectly round harbor is perched at the edge of the world. Beyond the harbor, a salt river meets the sea and the sea meets the sky like poured eternity. Not a bad place to call home if sleepy hamlets are your jam. And a sleepy hamlet that needs to be combined with two adjacent sleepy hamlets to constitute an actual town for census purposes? Well, that’s my Happy Place, population 1,267.
Just one peninsula to the east of Christmas Cove is Boothbay Harbor with its internationally famous ice cream shops, boardwalks, ocean view restaurants, and whale watching tours. But that bustling metropolis is a whole seven miles away by boat—thirty by car. Boothbay’s seasonal bloat of visitors jams up summers with long lines, rushing tourists—and worse, slow tourists—parking so scarce it’s an endangered species, crammed restaurants, and a swell of pretentious attitudes. In winter, the town is practically boarded up, shop owners migrating alongside 75% of Maine’s bird population as they head south toward a milder climate.
For residents of Christmas Cove, our sensibilities lean toward the self-contained. Inherently, we’re a practical people, and we stay close to home, and close to big nature. Trees far outnumber people on this peninsula where I was born and raised. Tall, old growth spruces stand like guardians, buffering the harbor and our homes with an evergreen curtain that inspires fancy travel magazines to refer to Christmas Cove as a “hidden gem,” which is a much nicer term than the names locals call tourists.
Today, my boat’s battling December wind as gulls glide above, squawking over my catch as I round Little Heron Island and steer toward Christmas Cove where my family’s stout and sturdy sparkplug lighthouse comes into full view. Decommissioned in the eighties because its lens needed repair—and technology had made its guiding light obsolete—I’ve never seen the beacon shine during my twenty-nine years. Still, every time I pass Cove Light, I swear it flickers for me. Just a wink—the sun catching the glass in the round lantern room even on late winter afternoons like today when the sun is low and slow in its retreat to the other side of the world. I like to think the sparkle bouncing off the glass is a hardy hello from the Pinkham women who came before me, like Memma’s mother (my great grandmother), and her mother’s mother, the original station keepers of Cove Light. Built by the state upon a long stretch of dark granite that spreads into the sea and beneath a thin blanket of waves, the lighthouse is now a rental cottage. You know, for tourists.
At the helm, I lean forward, my sharp hip pressing against the wheel like I’ll get to Memma and home faster if I push my whole body toward my destination. I realize this small, impatient action doesn’t actually increase my speed, just as I’m aware that sucking in my breath when passing under a tight bridge doesn’t make my boat any narrower. Still. There’s no one out here to tell me I’m ridiculous, which, factually speaking, makes me slightly less ridiculous.
I shove my glove-fattened fingers into the front pocket of my rubber overalls to free my flip phone and let Memma know I’ve returned from fishing just as static wakes my dash-mounted VHF radio.
“MerSea to BlueBug,” Maia broadcasts through the two-way transceiver, her voice threaded with a low hum. “Find me on eleven.”
I smile at Maia’s signature best friend assertiveness and slow my speed before making the familiar switch to the private radio channel. The round harbor grows wider before me. Its water is nestled within the horseshoe bend of the coastline where a few brave boats nod in the cold, slack current, their pointed white hulls huddled as close as old men in a coffee shop exchanging gossip. Though my windshield’s caked with icy spray from the open ocean, a porthole of defrosted glass allows me to take quick inventory of the cottage I share with Mem. Directly across the harbor is Maia’s little pink house that appears to be perched in the trees from this angle. The oversized picture window in her living room shows me Maia’s nervous energy pacing her back-and-forth, as if she’s forced to report ten thousand steps to her bossy watch in the next seven seconds.
“How was the trip?” Maia asks, sounding winded. “Wet and smelly?”
I depress the button on my transmitter mic. “Basically.”
Maia isn’t wired to care about the lobsters I haul or how many miles offshore I need to travel to trap them this time of year; she’s more concerned with my safe return, even though it’s a worry she won’t discuss out loud, particularly on the VHF. Fishermen are a superstitious bunch. Maia is next level.
“Did you check on Memma?” I thrust my engine to neutral and my boat bobs in the swells, the wind turning me toward Maia, my true north.
“She’s at the diner playing Scrabble. She’s fine, Charlie.”
But is she?
Because how would we even know?
Memma had been doing just finebefore she fell on our gravel path during an otherwise completely forgettable Tuesday nearly one year ago, mere moments after beginning her day with a polar plunge, that same vigorous morning dip she’d used to start her days for more than sixty years. The stumble sent us to the emergency room where the doctor explored the wounds to Memma’s hands and wrists after they broke her fall. He studied the contusion in the center of her forehead and maybe it was the bright examination lights of the hospital room, but I finally saw the other bruises, too. Discoloration marred Memma’s forearms, thighs, her calves and ankles. The short hospital gown exposed so much of her I hadn’t noticed. How hadn’t I noticed?
When the second doctor arrived, I was in full battle mode, ready to take on the person who’d been hurting my grandmother. But nothing would have prepared me for the real culprit. Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The diagnosis was so impossible, so far-fetched, so absolutely not the way things were supposed to go that I knew the doctor was wrong. She had the wrong chart. The wrong patient. The wrong next of kin.
But, no.
Mem’s blood had turned on her. That was the Diagnosis for Dummies abbreviation I still have a hard time wrapping my head around. Dad had raised me to honor the ocean that ran through our Pinkham blood, but somehow, in the pockets of life where I wasn’t paying attention, Mem’s blood had drained enough of the sea to make room for leukemic cells. And at seventy-three she had a two percent chance of survival with treatment. For four weeks, the doctors pumped poison through her veins and she shrank into a skeleton as I sat and slept and lived in the chair next to her hospital bed.
On her twenty-eighth day of care, my mem woke clear-eyed and quick-witted. Her smile was easy, her laughter full. She fussed with her feeding tube. Asked if we could watch Jeopardy, and when I’d be springing her from the prison of her room and tubes and illness. When the overnight nurse began her shift, she warned me to be careful with my joy, and my expectations. It was common for patients to display a surge of wellness before they passed. This was often the pattern of death, she’d said. One final gift of life before it ended.
She was wrong. She had to be.
I returned to Memma’s bedside, her closed eyelids twitching, the skin there fragile and thin and blue as she slept.
“You can beat this,” I told my grandmother with the simple, straightforward Yankee pragmatism she’d raised me on. Like when my dad didn’t return home from fishing when I was nine, and Mem promised me I could weather any storm, no matter how terrible.
She stood behind me then, gripping my young shoulders during Warren Sproul’s late night visit all those years ago, his wool hat at his chest as he stood in our kitchen, telling us he’d rescued my father’s boat and body. How he’d discovered him in calm seas, my dad on his back on the deck, his face to the sun, his arms and legs spread wide, as if his body’s last act on earth had been to remain open to the possibilities of the vast elsewhere beyond.
Mem kept me safe then. And after, when the entire village mourned my father, every home forgoing the use of electricity to drape the cove in darkness. Boats were silenced, too.
Maybe it was superstition, but no one wanted our earthly light to obstruct the soul of the deceased on its journey away from life.
There was too much we didn’t know about the ocean and the afterlife so our village treated them both kindly, treading lightly, showing stewardship and love. In the darkness people made space for grief, all of us living close with death as we lived by the deep.
Mem had been the one to break the news of how my mother had returned to her people in Tucson, before Dad’s funeral, before saying good-bye. My mother couldn’t stay near the salt and the sea and the sadness anymore, and Mem promised me she’d be my mother, father and memma all at once. And she was.
So, at her bedside with all the life-monitoring machines beeping and watching, I asked Mem to pull up her inner grit the way she’d taught me.
She did.
Somehow, miraculously, Memma survived the tubes and transfusions and toxic treatment. Two percent can look like the smallest number in the world until someone you love lives inside that statistic, and then it is a figure filled with hope and wonder and infinity.
It’s been months since she returned home to the cove, post recovery, post physical therapy. She’s thinner but just as spry. Like cancer was a hiccup, a blip, something that happened before breakfast. For me, the threat of her illness returning lurks like a hazard just beneath the surface of the sea, a catastrophic peril my internal radar can’t stop scanning for.
“Hello?” Maia pulls my attention back to the VHF and the inky harbor where fog gathers a handful of harbor seals to the cold, granite ledge at the base of the lighthouse.
“So, tonight?” Maia says.
“Fine, yes.”
“Do not fine, yes, me, Charlie Pinkham. Are you even listening?”
“Not entirely.” Not even remotely.
“Grr,” Maia growls—an actual, legit growl that snarls over the surge and static. “I’m freaking out about the missing post, remember? For December’s blog feature.”
“Of course I remember.” I was hoping she’d forget.
Maia is the proud owner of Mer/Sea, a fabulous lifestyle company with a blog devoted to trends inspired by the Atlantic. In all honesty, I’m not entirely sure what a blog is or even why a blog is. For a hot second a decade ago, when we were young and trying on freedom and college for size, I attempted to decipher Maia’s dialect of driving traffic and content marketing and social media shares, but quickly zoned out, my brain limited to understanding concepts my hands can touch, feel, manipulate. Now, my participation in Maia’s lifestyle brand generally consists of affirming head nods, redirects, and lots of praise. Mostly because, at my core, I’m ill-equipped to comprehend what a lifestyle is, seeing as I barely have a life.
Yesterday, Maia was panicked about an ocean kayaking guide who immerses participants in forest bathing on remote Maine islands. The guide had bailed, leaving Maia one contributor short for her annual Happily Ever Holidays blog—a series that features a Maine entrepreneur’s festive, romance-y post about their artisan industry.
“Have you given any more thought to writing a piece for me?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“And I’m convinced your interest is misguided. I know as much about happily ever afters as I do about blogs.”
“You know the sea and you know me—I’m your happily ever bestie. Come on, Charlie.”
“You really cannot find anyone else? Martha Stewart? Erin French?” Maia had Oprah contribute to one of her themed series two years ago. Seriously, Oprah.
“Martha and Erin are already contributing.”
I bark out a laugh that’s disturbingly similar to a seal yelp, harsh enough to bruise the air and verify I’m hardly a dignified content provider.
“Come on, Charlie. You were a mad talented writer in college.”
“Ha! For two seconds before we bailed on our first and only semester.”
“Whatever. You loved writing.”
“I loved writing in my journal about how much I hated being away from the peninsula.”
“Fair, but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t believe in you. And I need you.”
I depress the transmission button. “If you need me, I’m in.”
She revels in my acquiescence even though we both knew it was coming considering how Maia’s been my ride-or-die since kindergarten when I peed in my school-new pants while all the other kids were busy being normal and dry on the red, alphabet circle rug.
Maia held my hand as she led me to the in-classroom bathroom, offering me my choice of the three pairs of clean leggings she’d packed. Then she took me to her cubby stocked with a second pair of shoes, one shirt, a sweater, a baggie of spare hair ties, a granola bar, and two different colors of nail polish. Yep, two. (For art projects and in case her nails got bored, naturally.) When Billy Williams poked fun at me and the wet pants Maia rolled into her repurposed hair tie baggie, she walked right up to him and had words. Billy Williams was a mountain of a kid, twice her size at least, and looked as if he’d already failed a few grades, but Maia shut him up without even raising her voice. To this day, I still don’t know what she said to our classroom bully, but it’s never mattered. I learned a lesson in fierce loyalty that day, and it’s a gift I’ve never taken for granted.
“I did have an idea for a post,” I admit.
“Yes! This pleases me.”
“It shouldn’t. My topic quickly descended into cannibalism.”
“Cannibalism for Christmas? I am a fan of alliteration.”
“Everyone’s a fan of alliteration, but that isn’t my working title.”
Maia’s prolonged silence sounds as if her busy life as a mom of two is pulling her interest somewhere other than our conversation.
The current pushes me toward the strip of land that separates the harbor from the ocean, where my family’s cottage and lighthouse are perched. The cottage is small and shingled, largely unremarkable amidst the tall, lodgepole pines. It’s our family’s lighthouse that gets all the attention. Only fifty feet from the cottage, Cove Light sits at the outermost point of Christmas Cove. It stands at attention along a sheer spread of rock that spills into the ocean, the granite’s end arched in a permanent dive, looking like a humpback returning to the deep. Directly across from my family’s side of the cove is the village, complete with a town common and local shops and a one-lane paved road that leads to larger towns and bigger cities. A car turns off that road now, heading down our private drive.
“I say run with your idea.” Maia’s voice sounds distant with distraction. “I’m sure it will be amazing.”
“You know what’s weird?”
“In general? Or right now?”
“It’s weird you’re not disturbed by the fact that the subject of my article shifted so quickly to cannibalism.”
“Let’s be real.” Maia’s tone is easy over the wire now, like she trusts that I’ve got this.
I definitely do not got this.
“Isn’t every conversation one comment away from being about cannibalism?” she says.
And that, right there, is why Maia is my forever favorite person.
“Oh, and Charlie? It’s not an article; it’s a blog post. Get over yourself.”
I laugh.
“By tonight,” she adds. “I’ll give it a quick read and edit before posting, okay?”
“It’s okay adjacent.”
“Excellent!” She pauses. “Hey, I think you’ve got a visitor.” I can practically hear the squeak of her hand as she cups it against her window.
“Maybe my rental guest?”
“Which is great since you love when people arrive early. I forget. Is it your favorite thing for people to be pre-punctual or your second favorite thing?”
“You’re hylarical.” I duck my head beyond the pilothouse to see a man exiting his car, stretching his arms high above his head and shifting one knee into tree pose. In this part of the world, women and men work eighteen hours on the sea and barely give their shoulders a stretch, but this guy’s feeling tight after a little drive north from—I squint to read the license plate—Rhode Island? Perfect.
“My, my,” Maia says. “He’s sporting quite the puffy puffer jacket.”
“Ga-reat.” My eyeroll is nearly audible.
“Oh, right! Pre-punctual dudes who do yoga in puffy jackets are your favorite thing.” She laughs. I do not. “Don’t forget: tourists think cranky Mainers are kitschy and cute until they have to deal with one in the wild so be nice.”
“Reminding me to be nice? Nice.”
“Ha! Well, you can be scary to the unacclimated. Hey…” Her voice lowers toward conspiracy. “Is it me, or might your renter be cute under all that pufferwear?”
Legally, Maia shouldn’t be using a land-based VHF unless she’s checking in on the business needs of my vessel. The two-way radio license is granted to her husband’s volunteer work as the controller of the harbor. “Don’t make me report you for illegal radio use.”
“Oh, that’s good!” she says. “You should write your post about how much you love rules and regulations and maritime law. My readers will love that!”
“Is that a dare?”
“No! It is definitely not a dare. Do not take that as a dare, Charlotte Pinkham.”
Driving Maia to the point where she feels compelled to use my full, legal name gives me a secret thrill. Every time. Clinical therapy would likely reveal how this odd excitement is rooted in my motherlessness, but it makes me smile all the same. “I need to go.”
“Tell me if he’s cute.”
“Will do. Right after I give you the full report on his stunning wife.”
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