Maine Inside Me

In my mind’s eye, I can see the little boy back in 1936 - with his silky black hair and dark eyes - already a looker at age eight, but with a child’s innocence of how good looks can play out in a person’s life. They walk together silently, the mother and the son, an understanding between them as thick as cream. Just past the edge of the paper mill town he picked up a stick and hurled it across the wide expanse of snow. “Jimmy,” she said. A stranger would not have remarked on the one word spoken in a low voice, but he heard the thread of warning in it. He did not pick up another stick even when fat ones beckoned. The snow crunched under their worn leather boots - hers black and cracked with age, his brown and passed down from his older brother - which kept their feet dry but did not keep the frigid temperature at bay. They heard the bellow from the mill that signaled the end of the midnight-to-eight shift. Crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch he thought to himself. Crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch to stop himself from thinking about how cold his hands were even inside the thick mittens his mother had knitted for him. His mother passed him the paper bag of molasses cookies fresh from her oven that morning. He knew not to eat one yet, even though his mouth was watering. He hoped Aunt Betty - his mother’s sister who lived with Uncle Irving on the farm he and Mumma were headed toward miles outside of town - would give him a glass of milk that wasn’t watered down to make it go further. “Uncle Irving,” - his big sister had whispered to him one shadowy night when Mumma was working late again - ”is our father’s brother!” His face had opened in surprise. No one in their home ever mentioned the father he had never met.

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