Amber Returns to Maine
by Susan Haley

Will you ever revisit the cliff house, the bird cove, or again fly the silver Spirit car over the coast road? Will you ever return to Maine? Is a sequel about the Rainy Day People on the horizon, or did Amber and Ben really find their sun? Surely, those quirky characters have another story in them! Several times, I’ve been asked these kinds of questions by people who’ve read Amber’s story and became rather attached to her idiosyncratic nature. Even Ben, in his crotchety way, was endearing to my readers. I’ve been touched by these reactions to this peculiar pair as that is how Amber came to be. I truly felt she had a story to tell.

Family, friends, people that knew me at all, caught on pretty fast to Amber’s role as protagonist. Others, of course, didn’t since the book was classified as fiction and the author was relatively unknown and remains so. In reality, the story was but embellished. The characters were genuine; the sequence of events, for the most part, true. Only the Maine locale was created in the realm of imagination. The initial journey to the harbor town was taken by Amber. I was but the recorder of her reflective musings. On the recent return, the roles reversed. It was Amber who reveled in the events of my own trip to the North Country. Ben now rides a rainbow, so another sequel wouldn’t be the same unless totally created. That won’t work for me.

Earlier this year, as most of you know, a paralyzing stroke erected a road block in my meanderings. I was fortunate, and movement slowly returned to my left limbs. Nonetheless, it was a wake up call. I still had a few dreams to fulfill. It had already been arranged that when travel was again feasible, I’d come to Pennsylvania for a two month sabbatical with my son, the younger, and daughter-in-law, and of course, my granpup, BB McPup. Possibly you’ve read BB’s story on sucarha.com. My son, the older, was laid off work in Chicago and agreed to come to the Florida tree house and watch over the grounds and tend to the cats and critters.

In July, my younger son called from Harrisburg and in his exaggerated southern drawl, said, “Hey Maw, how’d ya like to go to Maine?”

When I chose Maine for the final setting in “Rainy Day People”, I’d never been there. It was the one missing link in my childhood dream to see the country’s majesty as it was when the flag wore forty-eight stars. I’d spanned the country coast to coast and border to border as co-pilot in my husband’s eighteen wheeler, but never Maine. Perhaps, it was because Maine was like the cowlick on the head of America’s land face. It sort of stuck out up there in solitude, untrespassed on the major routes elsewhere. Maine held a mystery for me, a fantasy of sorts, and Amber was my way to go; Amber was my way to fulfill the creative conjuring of youth. On the last Sunday of August, the silver convertible once again headed north, packed to capacity sans the lamp protruding from the rear window. Ben rode in the memories. In my mind’s eye, I could see him smiling his fiendish grin.

Upon arrival in Harrisburg, true to ‘our’ nature, Amber’s and my wanderlust had blossomed with new life. BB McPup welcomed me heartily and assured me he’d fill Taggie’s prior role. How could Amber travel to Maine without the company of a beloved rescued critter? But first, a train ride to NYC and a weekend with Lois and Ken Stern on Long Island had been planned. The click-clack of train wheels chattering on the tracks lulled me into reverie. Lois and I have become dear friends since meeting at the Infinity Publishing Conference at Valley Forge in 2006. The visit was wonderful, and this time, I left New York unscathed by the battles of Times Square unlike my first visit there with my son. You may remember that story first published in the Fox and Quill.

The following Friday, we all journeyed to Michigan to see my sister and her family. I was chauffeured, perched in the back seat with BB and relaxing in the songs of moving tires on the road again. My eyes took in the beginning hues of fall on the ridgelines supporting the huge windmills of the wind farms. My spirit soared at the sight of the huge blades furiously spinning in the currents, a new experience. In the valley, a lone wooden windmill from earlier times still pumped water into the cattle troughs. Nostalgic and exhilarating at once, this scene.

The time in Michigan was another treasure absorbed. It was a gift wrapped in hugs, laughter and continual banter. I do believe BB McPup and their family dog, Annabelle, were the stars of the gathering, though. Yani the cat, disgusted by the furor, brought back memories of Tag. Taggie would’ve been wrestling with the dogs rather than watching in disdain from behind the chair. Time passed quickly and Sunday afternoon, after a chase to convince BB we wouldn’t leave without him, we left my waving family in their driveway and turned toward the Interstate.

Tears clouded my eyes, and I swear I noticed a glistening in McPup’s eyes, too. It’s not easy to leave those we love, or to lose them when they go on before us. The tears spilled over and slid down my cheeks. The physical absence of family members now gone kind of yells at you at such family reunions, yet they continue to fill the room in essence and reminiscence.

Prior to the invitation to travel to Maine, I’d registered to attend the Tenth Infinity Publishing Conference. Writers, like truck drivers, cops, and firefighters, tend to form somewhat closed communities. Inspiration is the needed element in this writing work and these annual reunions of camaraderie rarely fail to supply it. The air fairly crackles with excitement as we see old friends and comrades and share the latest trends in the writing world. We learn and we teach, and most importantly, support, even if but for a few days. Networking it’s called, and no writer can know success of any level without it in these times of rapidity and change in the way of doing things.

There are absolutes in how to network successfully. At their conference, Infinity does it well. For three days the last weekend of September, every writer present is a star and a professional whether they recognize it or not, first time author or best seller. There is no separation between the pros and the novices. Mingling is a given and one can’t help but leave with a new energy. Still, in the mingling, failure can loom if one is all about ‘me’. Every writer is unique just as every person is unique. Arrogance and self-centeredness can be a writer’s demise, especially in the company of other writers. Always be as good at listening with sincere interest as you are at speaking and self-promoting. Remember that and you’ll be rewarded.

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We left Valley Forge fulfilled and my thoughts turned north to Maine. We were preparing to leave the coming Friday morning. It was time to repack the bags I’d been living out of for a month.

Fittingly, Friday dawned with a cerulean mural overhead and a chill hiding in the wind. Even though I was again nested in the rear of the vehicle with my granpup, Amber was bubbling to the surface from within. The pull of her influence on me is remarkable. I’ll be eternally grateful to my kids for inviting her to become my life again. I cast a loving glance toward them in the front seats. BB’s thoughts, I suspect, drifted back a couple of weeks to his visit with Annabelle and his ‘peoples’ family. Little did he know he was about to embark on journey across a time dimension and into the business of living a dream.

I nestled into my seat and extracted my bag of grapes, trembling with eagerness. It wasn’t long before my eyes again rested on the increasingly colorful woodlands of Connecticut. Amber was returning to Maine. I sighed, audibly I’m sure, as I left this world and crossed back into the realm where only imagination can take us. I could almost smell the frost on the pumpkins once again.

Somewhere in Massachusetts, we stopped for the night. While my son unloaded his bicycles from the rear carrier and daughter went in to unlock and inspect our room, McPup and I wandered a bit into the woodline backing up to the parking area. His nose wiggled relentlessly as he darted in circles of excitement just as Taggie had done on journeys past. My heart intermittingly pounded and stopped. Some emotions are impossible to describe with semantics, even if employing the art of the metaphor I so love. It’s an inner sense more than an outward feeling. I slept soundly with visions of cliff houses and surf crashing on the rocks below.

In the afternoon of the new day after wrenching through New Hampshire’s mountains, I saw it. Again, I yelled out, “There it is!”

There, just forty or fifty feet ahead of us, almost hidden in the vegetation, a faded carved-wood sign announced . . . Welcome to Maine.

Son had managed to procure us a cottage in the wilderness that was strikingly similar in structure to the cliff house. It was, however, on the shore of Echo Lake rather than a cliff by the sea. Amber didn’t care; we were in state of near ecstasy just being in Maine. We were surrounded by trees and rocky slopes a mile or so down a gravel road that was the driveway to our dwelling. I could smell the sea just over the ridge. I climbed down out of the vehicle, colliding with McPup who had the same idea. Neither of knew which direction to go first. It was a joy unparalleled to step onto the earthy surface of Maine, breathe in the fragrances of a dream. Again, there’s no language to suffice the description.

It would require more than my share of space in Fox and Quill to reiterate the activities of the next week. I could only delve into high points, themselves difficult to prioritize, so I’ll share the relative highest. The next morning, we drove to the edge of the continent, just a few miles by highway to an accessible view that I yearned for, the view I’d written in the story. I knew it was there and I’d know it when I saw it . . .

The highway was rising now, and twisting to flow with the land’s edge. The relentless pounding surf chiseled indiscriminately into the rock coastline, determined to claim for its own whatever would give way. The road tunneled through the rock at one point near the top. We cleared the rock burrow and stretched before us lay the open expanse of the Atlantic. Wild sky and rolling forests adorned the cliffs framing the water. Angry water.

The splendor enveloped me, the smell, the sound, the raw power of the sea. The distant surface was a slate gray blending into blue-green pipelines that rolled in to crash against the cliffs sending giant plumes of spray high into the windswept air. Amber had come home! And this time, she brought me with her. The invisible line between character and author had finally disintegrated. Amber and Susan are once again, one.

“There it is! The sea, Ben, the sea . . .” A tear slid down my cheeks as the seagull pendent around my neck absorbed the cold of the wind.

What is time? It can dwell in a bottle or a river, fly or inch over a stone at a snail’s pace; a slug, leaving a trail of shimmering goo. Memories stored in mind rooms either cherished, denied or guarded by locked doors. But what is a memory? Perhaps, it’s but a dimension. A dimension measuring our lives and deaths that can be revisited in reflection or present reality many times over. What are these things we call life, death, truth, and fantasy? Is there such as time, really? Or but facets of dreams and imaginings of what was, is, and what could still be?

Perhaps it’s true . . . There is no lost; there is no found. There are only rainbows all around.

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