The Ledges
I couldn't understand what was happening to my grandmother, but I could stop an ocean.
Very few inheritances last. They are spent, or lost, or parceled off. From my maternal grandfather, who died when I was eight, I have two rings with stones he polished and set in silver. From my grandmother, who died two years later, I have a half-dozen beaded gowns, costume jewelry, a glass lamp, a hutch, two porcelain figurines, a diamond ring, and the memory of playing on the ledges in the cove across from her house.
My family moved to Maine from our farm in Elmira, Oregon, in 1983 after my grandmother, Virginia Hamilton Lincoln, was diagnosed with lung cancer.Her only daughter was my mother, Lucy Lincoln, who sold our little yellow ranch, buckled my twelve-year-old brother, Sunny, and me into our red station wagon, and drove east with our collie, Halo, and two lovebirds.
Two weeks and 3,000 miles later we pulled into my grandmother's Cape Neddick driveway in the early dark of an August morning. Rather than wake her, we slept in the car. I don't remember what my grandmother said when she saw us, or what we did that first morning, but I do remember her house. It was everything the farm wasn't: clean, formal, expansive.
My mother's family had lived on Shore Road since the 1930s, and at one time owned long swatches of woods and fields along the Atlantic. Although most of the land had long since been sold and my grandmother lived rather modestly, moving in with her was quite a change for a girl who grew up shopping at Goodwill and plucking chickens in the backyard.
What saved me was across the road, that great, rolling field of water that stretched from the rocky ledges to the end of the horizon. The shore was a kind of canyon, with ledges so steep we had to slide down them on our rears. Sunny and I practically lived in the cove those last weeks of summer, climbing over the jagged rocks with our bare feet, searching for starfish and crabs, hunting for buoys and bits of lobster traps, and building forts among the rocks.
The cove was ours. There weren't other houses. There weren't other people. There were just rocks, firm and immoveable. I knew each one, its angles and ridges, the spaces and gaps between. I got so I could race from one to the next without ever looking down, my feet always finding a hold.
"People have been washed off those ledges," my grandmother warned.
Indeed, that very summer somewhere farther up the coast a tourist was swept off the ledges and drowned. But I wasn't afraid; I was exhilarated. Each time the fearsome water crashed into the cliff, I felt as if the ocean had reached for me and lost. As each wave thundered toward me, I believed it was my own power that kept it from washing me away. I couldn't keep my mother from selling our farm. I couldn't keep in touch with my old friends. I couldn't make sense of my new home or begin to understand what was happening to my grandmother, but I could stop an ocean.
That fall my mother took a job teaching art at a small Christian school across the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth. I started sixth grade. Sunny went into seventh. My grandmother spent most of her time in the den, watching television game shows or filling in crossword puzzles. She was a mystery to me — a pianist so talented she could have performed concerts, and yet I never heard her play; a painter whose abstract oils hung on the walls of the iconic Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, and yet I never saw her lift a brush; a hostess known for her sharp wit and brilliant mind, and yet she rarely had guests.
My grandmother never shared her secrets with me, nor her memories or her pain — although she did tell me not to smoke. When I was sick, she let me sit on the couch beside her and watch Wheel of Fortune. She made me mugs of Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches flattened in a press. And once — just once — she jestingly called me her angel, although I'll never know why. That spring, at the age of sixty-seven, she died, not in pain as the doctors predicted, but in peace.
We had lived with my grandmother for just nine months. Her house, which seemed so strange when I first arrived, seemed stranger afterward. There was a hollowness in the house and a hollowness in me. I lost not only my grandmother, but the chance to know her. Didn't anything remain?
My uncles came — one from California, one from Down East Maine — to empty my grandmother's ashes on the golf club green and collect the things she left behind. The house was sold, and my family moved inland to South Berwick, to farm country.
Now, married with children of my own, I cherish those brief memories of my grandmother as I cherish the gifts she gave me — not the furniture and knickknacks, not the jewelry, but (I like to think) her wit and mind. I live two hours north, but on every little errand that draws me south, I turn off the interstate just past the York tolls. I mosey up Route 1 and swing down Shore Road.
Twenty years have changed almost everything. My great-grandparents' house has been gutted and rebuilt, their potting shed turned into a glorified guesthouse. Vinyl-sided residences are rooted in the fields where the horses grazed. My grandmother's house, where I arrived on that morning long ago, has been repainted, a swimming pool dug where my grandfather's asparagus came up each spring. But between the road and the sea, it is the same.
On warm summer days, I park my car on the narrow shoulder like a tourist. But I don't tote a camera. I take no pictures. I slide off my shoes, scoot down the ledges, and leap across the sun-warmed rocks to find a familiar hold. No matter how the world shifts above them, the ledges remain.
My family moved to Maine from our farm in Elmira, Oregon, in 1983 after my grandmother, Virginia Hamilton Lincoln, was diagnosed with lung cancer.Her only daughter was my mother, Lucy Lincoln, who sold our little yellow ranch, buckled my twelve-year-old brother, Sunny, and me into our red station wagon, and drove east with our collie, Halo, and two lovebirds.
Two weeks and 3,000 miles later we pulled into my grandmother's Cape Neddick driveway in the early dark of an August morning. Rather than wake her, we slept in the car. I don't remember what my grandmother said when she saw us, or what we did that first morning, but I do remember her house. It was everything the farm wasn't: clean, formal, expansive.
My mother's family had lived on Shore Road since the 1930s, and at one time owned long swatches of woods and fields along the Atlantic. Although most of the land had long since been sold and my grandmother lived rather modestly, moving in with her was quite a change for a girl who grew up shopping at Goodwill and plucking chickens in the backyard.
What saved me was across the road, that great, rolling field of water that stretched from the rocky ledges to the end of the horizon. The shore was a kind of canyon, with ledges so steep we had to slide down them on our rears. Sunny and I practically lived in the cove those last weeks of summer, climbing over the jagged rocks with our bare feet, searching for starfish and crabs, hunting for buoys and bits of lobster traps, and building forts among the rocks.
The cove was ours. There weren't other houses. There weren't other people. There were just rocks, firm and immoveable. I knew each one, its angles and ridges, the spaces and gaps between. I got so I could race from one to the next without ever looking down, my feet always finding a hold.
"People have been washed off those ledges," my grandmother warned.
Indeed, that very summer somewhere farther up the coast a tourist was swept off the ledges and drowned. But I wasn't afraid; I was exhilarated. Each time the fearsome water crashed into the cliff, I felt as if the ocean had reached for me and lost. As each wave thundered toward me, I believed it was my own power that kept it from washing me away. I couldn't keep my mother from selling our farm. I couldn't keep in touch with my old friends. I couldn't make sense of my new home or begin to understand what was happening to my grandmother, but I could stop an ocean.
That fall my mother took a job teaching art at a small Christian school across the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth. I started sixth grade. Sunny went into seventh. My grandmother spent most of her time in the den, watching television game shows or filling in crossword puzzles. She was a mystery to me — a pianist so talented she could have performed concerts, and yet I never heard her play; a painter whose abstract oils hung on the walls of the iconic Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, and yet I never saw her lift a brush; a hostess known for her sharp wit and brilliant mind, and yet she rarely had guests.
My grandmother never shared her secrets with me, nor her memories or her pain — although she did tell me not to smoke. When I was sick, she let me sit on the couch beside her and watch Wheel of Fortune. She made me mugs of Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches flattened in a press. And once — just once — she jestingly called me her angel, although I'll never know why. That spring, at the age of sixty-seven, she died, not in pain as the doctors predicted, but in peace.
We had lived with my grandmother for just nine months. Her house, which seemed so strange when I first arrived, seemed stranger afterward. There was a hollowness in the house and a hollowness in me. I lost not only my grandmother, but the chance to know her. Didn't anything remain?
My uncles came — one from California, one from Down East Maine — to empty my grandmother's ashes on the golf club green and collect the things she left behind. The house was sold, and my family moved inland to South Berwick, to farm country.
Now, married with children of my own, I cherish those brief memories of my grandmother as I cherish the gifts she gave me — not the furniture and knickknacks, not the jewelry, but (I like to think) her wit and mind. I live two hours north, but on every little errand that draws me south, I turn off the interstate just past the York tolls. I mosey up Route 1 and swing down Shore Road.
Twenty years have changed almost everything. My great-grandparents' house has been gutted and rebuilt, their potting shed turned into a glorified guesthouse. Vinyl-sided residences are rooted in the fields where the horses grazed. My grandmother's house, where I arrived on that morning long ago, has been repainted, a swimming pool dug where my grandfather's asparagus came up each spring. But between the road and the sea, it is the same.
On warm summer days, I park my car on the narrow shoulder like a tourist. But I don't tote a camera. I take no pictures. I slide off my shoes, scoot down the ledges, and leap across the sun-warmed rocks to find a familiar hold. No matter how the world shifts above them, the ledges remain.
- By: Meadow Rue Merrill
