Maine memories.....

Just back from a wonderful week "Down East".... My husband has been trying to get me to go anywhere but the southern beaches for the last 20 years. I've resisted, the southern belle that I am, but am now sorry I was so stubborn. We enjoyed Boston, but the best part was the Down East section of gorgeous Maine!! (See accompanying photos.)

God's country.
Heaven on earth.

And the folks were so very, well, nice. I have been a bigot all my life, thinking southerners were the most hospitable. I have learned, so late in life, that I have been wrong. Maine. Maine. Maine. It's my new mantra, my daily chant into relaxation and rejeuvenation. Maine. And we have already made our reservations for next year.




While I admit we traveled in a relatively small geographic area, I kept wondering as I looked around: Where were all the poorly behaved kids? No screaming toddlers, no militant middle schoolers? Just happy, active children. Everywhere I looked. Although I will confess I wish their parents had been stricter with them about running while in a restaurant, I was amazed at the fun I had "baby gazing". Even the newborns were well-behaved. And when they weren't, who cared anyway? They were just so damn cute. Case in point:

While in LL Bean, I met a young mother feeding one of her twin infants. The other was fussing in his stroller and I asked this lovely, calm woman if I could try and entertain him. She kindly agreed, and I began to talk silly to Keegan in hopes of settling him down. He was just hungry, and very little of my cajoling worked. The mother's three year old little girl Molly ran up to check me out, and together we tried to hush the pathetic, "starving" tot. As the feeding twin finished off his bottle, and the mother began to switch arms to put him away in the stroller, I got a first look at her prosthetic right arm. With a smoothness that surprised me, she made the switcheroo, began to feed little Keegan, the Molly and I got to play with Braedon.

She was a teacher, middle school Math, and so was her husband. She was just waiting for her teenage cousin to finish shopping so she could get her brood back home ASAP. Throughout this torture of shopping-with-babies, she never seemed to get flustered. Not once. I remember tripping up ALL THE TIME when my babies were small, always alittled frazzled.

She was magnificent.

On the way back to our "resort home", I counted my meeting Molly and Keegan and Braedon's mother as one of the joys of our vacation.

That, and the discount prices at LL Bean.