this weekend i shot a beautiful wedding in Camden, very close to my hometown, and i always find it so tough to get back into the rhythm of living in Rumford….being so far away from family, life long friends, and of course….the ocean. Rumford is close to a plethora of beauty all it’s own but after 6 years i still feel a bit like a puzzle piece that wasn’t meant to go in the box with the others.  i think when you grow up next to the ocean it just sticks with you…maybe it isn’t even the ocean….maybe home haunts and comforts us all.

anyway…i was considering whining about the fact that i miss it so much this morning. in my own dreaminess i had actually formed the idea that i would be waking up in my childhood bedroom on Sunset Street…you know how you do that sometimes?  and my first thought was getting my bike and going to the rope swing tied to an old elm tree looking over the harbor.  (by the way, my dad sold my childhood home several years ago, my bike is long since gone and honestly, i never really rode it that much anyway, and so is the rope swing and the tree…someone cut it down to build a ridiculous house.)

i was going to whine.

but, shuffling sleepily into the living room i see my two girls sitting on the couch, matching Sea Dog t-shirts on, watching Loony Toons, and eating cereal, and looking…..well…..at home.

i didn’t whine. i didn’t even want to. not even a little.

i fit here. this place called….wherever they are in the morning.

unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense…{e.e.cummings}

Katie, Josh and i managed to get their engagement session in right before the 2 week stretch of rain we have had here in Maine. there really is nothing more amazing than a beach session up here in the spring…a gentle reminder that we have finally made it through another cold winter, and sun and sand and bathing suits and sunscreen are just around the corner. and the slightly overcast day was just perfect!

the Wells Reserve is a hidden gem…a sprawling farm overlooking a salt marsh on the coast with wonderful and knowledgeable caretakers. i love that my couples have brought me to places i would have never even known existed in my very own state.

daily mantra: every friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by meeting that a new world is born…anais.nin

approximately 6:43pm the night before the session.

:text:

me: how many outfits do you have?

heather: how many am i supposed to have?

me: what are you envisioning for this session?

heather: what is your vision? you’re the vision person.

me: well i want you to love it, so wear what you want.

heather: where are we going?

me: i am still thinking…i am thinking like downtown Augusta and some random abandoned farm on the way that i am sure we aren’t allowed to trespass on but we are going to anyway.

heather: ok.

me: so, i am thinking, trendy shabby chic meets urban.

heather: ok. josh and i are going to Goodwill.

me: Goodwill is an hour away.

heather: yup.

:end.text:

daily mantra: love is what makes two people sit in the middle of a bench when there is plenty of room on both sides…

winter is usually quiet on the wedding front in Maine since we are buried in about 5 feet of snow, even in March. but when Heather and Aaron asked me to photograph their wedding i couldn’t have been more excited. this amazing couple had a big and fun group of friends and family to share in their very special day, and despite the very chilly temperatures, there was so much emotion and love between this tight knit group.

daily mantra: it’s like life’s this slippery slope and we’re never really in control and sometimes it seems like running into a tree is the worst thing that could ever happen, when really it’s what stops us from going over the cliff. –Brian Strause

my grandmother took me to the cemetery almost every day in the summer to visit my long past grandfather that i never knew or never met. i don’t remember when it first started, but i think it was always. my grandmother, some would describe her as a deliciously sweet and generous woman while others would say she was an abrasive and even mean woman (to me, she was the most loving, most wonderful woman ever, but i have heard other twisted tales), would travel down the familiar alley of my grandfathers grave and sit there looking out the window of her blue Caprice Classic and stare at the stone for what seemed in child-time like forever. when my parents learned of these frequent trips, they were, of course, both horrified. however, even after the verbal threats by both of them, i still remember going to see the well groomed cemetery plot into my mid teens. fresh flowers were put there weekly in the late spring and all through the summer as she could afford it, and on special days, yellow roses. she could always afford the special days, although i never asked why they were special days, as it never did seem an appropriate time to ask  in the many years we had gone together.

one humid day in August (my grandmother despised the heat…cursed about it in front of me even), i was weaving in and out of cemetery stones in my newly sewn shorts (yes…sewn) and pink jelly shoes, and as my hair, wet from swimming lessons at Sandy Shores earlier that day thumped against my back, i asked THE question. “Gram, are we all going to die?” i must have been feeling pretty fresh that day…i honestly cannot remember what in earth made me say it, but when the words tumbled out, they stopped even me in my tracks.

unfazed  by my comment, she said as she looked around the sprawling concrete monuments of that cemetery on Old County Road: “it would appear so.”

“even me?” i asked quietly…almost so she couldn’t hear.

“nahhh, i quite imagine you will be the first to outsmart them.”

she said it with raw and unwavering truth, and so, i believed it to be so.

i found out when i was like 12 and in Mr.Henry’s 7th grade science class, that in fact, i was going to die. i was shocked, but his proof based scenarios seemed to hold up more than my grandmother’s statement. i never told her that i took his word over hers though. that would have just been disrespectful.

my grandmother’s health began to really fail as i hit my junior year in high school. it was then we made our last trip down to the cemetery together. i was driving then, and i had taken her in that same blue Caprice Classic to gaze upon this rock in the ground that i really had no feeling about what-so-ever, but had this feeling that i should be feeling something….so i felt guilt instead. the idling of that car always reminded me of a quiet, chugging train. as the noised hummed over us, i asked what i had waited probably 15 years to ask.

“Gram, why are we here today?”

“don’t mumble deary…its not of a lady to mumble.”

i wasn’t mumbling, and i could tell from the expression on her face that she heard me just fine.

“WHY-are-we-here?” i punctuated each word in sassy teenage tone.

“Oh…..”

she had been thinking about the answer since i asked the very first time.

“Oh”, she said again…”regret…..” i realized my teenage-ness needed to be put away, so i stuffed that attitude so deeply down that i don’t think it ever came out again after that in the same way, or even at all.

“and love, Baby Girl.”

she grabbed my hand tightly but didn’t look at my face…only at the grave. there were no tears or drama, (as some people who knew my grandmother to be quite dramatic, and she was quite dramatic, would have expected… only humble honesty). i never went back to the cemetery again after that, even after she passed away….it would just seem strange to go without her.

we did what we always did after the cemetery, went to Dorman’s Dairy Dream and got an ice cream and talked about swimming lessons when i was little and college and how the lady down the hall from her apartment in the assisted living community was driving her nuts and she called the cops on her because the things she put down the trash chute were too big.

my girl, Mikki, and I were walking in the field today, and she asked out of the blue…

“does everyone die, Mom?”

my answer…

“i imagine you will be the first to outsmart them…”