Leaving Maine

“I wish we could stay here forever.” I said to my crying wife as I drove away from our red brick apartment building in Portland Maine for the last time. We had driven in and out of that little parking lot so many times over the last year, it was weird to think that we would never do it again. My wife tried to voice that thought, but was overwhelmed by sobs before she could get it out. I wasn’t crying yet, but I felt the sadness too. It was just so hard to leave.

Three years previously my wife looked at me one Sunday afternoon and unexpectedly said “would you want to move to Maine?” Just as unexpectedly, I replied, “yeah, that sounds fun.” We weren’t normally the adventurous type, and Maine was a long way away from our home in Logan Utah. My wife had been to Maine a few times as a kid, but I’d never been there. Why would we go to Maine? It made no sense. But in that moment, we decided we would do it, crazy as it sounded.

As we drove further from the apartment, our cat started to whine and cry the way cats do. She had been in the car before, but she’d never been so agitated. It was almost as if she understood that we were leaving for good, and she was mourning with us. We adopted her the month after we moved to Maine, and she was now an integral part of the family. A living, breathing part of Maine that was coming with us. That didn’t make leaving easy though.

After we had decided to move to Maine, we also decided to keep it a secret from our families. We knew what they’d say. They’d think it wasn’t possible or realistic or smart, just a silly childish dream. We didn’t want anyone to squash our dream, even if it was crazy. So, for a long time, it was our little secret, something we’d only talk about together.

I looked fondly at all the beautiful green trees along the road when we got onto the highway to leave. It was May, and after the long winter this was the first time the trees were completely green again. It was so different from Utah, where we were headed, so I tried to enjoy the beauty as much as I could, knowing it was the last time.

My wife got accepted into her grad program for speech pathology. We were super excited for her, but we were even more excited when we learned that the second year of her program was all work experience that she could do anywhere in the country. No one had ever done it in Maine, but it was possible. Our dream suddenly had a chance to become a reality.

We didn’t talk much as we passed the familiar towns south of Portland on our way out of the state. Scarborough, Saco, Biddeford, Kennebunk. It was hard not to think that this would be the last time in years that I would see those familiar places. I’d visited several of them, driven past the rest countless times. But those days were now over.

We started telling our families that we were thinking about moving to Maine. We didn’t let them know how serious we were though, and their responses were all the same. “Oh, that could be cool.” They would say it with the undertone that it would never actually happen. But as my wife started her schooling and we learned more about it, we started looking at places to live and at housing costs. We were determined to make it happen.

Kittery was the last big town we passed before leaving Maine. As we neared the border, we passed a sign that said “Maine: worth a visit, worth a lifetime.” I said to my wife “why did we choose a visit? Why not a lifetime?” She started to cry again. We talked about the sign you see when you enter Maine, which says “welcome home.” As we got closer and closer to the border, we kept looking over our shoulders to try to see it one last time. We somehow missed it though, leaving that sign as a distant memory from a happier drive.  

Money became the biggest obstacle in actually getting to Maine. The cost of living there was much more than Logan, Utah, and the cost of getting all our stuff out there was a lot too. As active followers of Jesus Christ, we believe in paying tithing. Our church offers a way to do it online. During this time of figuring out how to afford moving my wife got online to pay tithing, and as she did so she got an email from her school. She had been awarded a scholarship amounting to almost 10 thousand dollars. Our prayers had been answered and the promise in Malachi 3 had been fulfilled. We had the money we needed to make the move!

The 45 minutes from our apartment to New Hampshire went by way too quickly. On the bridge over the Piscataqua river we drove under the sign welcoming us to New Hampshire, leaving Maine for the final time. The emotions finally flooded over, and tears started to steam down my face. My wife started crying again too, and we held hands in silence for a few moments in shared grief over a dream that was officially over.

We finally built up the courage to tell our families that we were actually planning on moving to Maine. As expected, they had doubts. We were a young married couple who only lived an hour and a half from our hometown, and we didn’t even know anyone in Maine. But we held firm to our dream, and our families slowly started to realize it was actually going to happen. Thankfully, they became supportive and excited, even if they didn’t fully understand.

We continued to drive for a couple hours before making our first stop. On the drive to Maine, we only stopped once per day, but going back to Utah we knew we’d need to stop more. My wife was 23 weeks pregnant this time, and her bladder was feeling the growing baby. We were usually excited about the coming adventure of having a baby, but in the moment it just meant more time on a long, hard drive away from the beautiful place that had become our home.

Time flew by, and before we knew it my wife’s first year of school was over, and we were packed up ready to move to Maine. Our dream was finally going to happen! I remember being excited as we drove away from my parents’ house, even though my mom broke down in tears as we left. The four-day drive went by quickly, and we loved seeing so much of the country we had never seen before. The best part of the drive was crossing into Maine though and seeing the sign that said “Maine - Welcome home.” We cheered and took pictures. Our dream had officially started!

Movies always show pouring rain during times of grief and loss. But the weather as we drove through Massachusetts and then into New York was a perfect sunny 72-degrees. I think it would have been easier to leave if it had been raining. At least we could have told ourselves that it didn’t rain as much in the desert called Utah. But we had to leave on one of the perfect summer days we had learned to love so much in the east. While most of the coast was rejoicing, the nice weather made the sting of leaving that much sharper for us.

That first night in Maine was rough, because we had no power and none of our stuff. The next day though we called the electricity company and our things got delivered, so we worked hard and fast to make the little one-bedroom apartment our new home. With some help from the local congregation of our church, we had everything moved in and unpacked in two days. A quick trip to Old Orchard Beach that weekend helped it all sink in. We were actually living in Maine!

The trees in New York slowly became more and more sparse as we travelled further west. The greenery of the east that we had fallen in love with was slowly fading. Utah has its own kind of beauty of course, but in that moment I didn’t care much for mountains or red rocks. Green trees and sandy beaches were my home. At least, they had been. 

Real life follows you wherever you go, and moving to Maine was no exception. I worked remotely from home, and my wife worked in schools and clinics all day, with classes in the evenings. But we took advantage of every spare evening and weekend we had to enjoy our beautiful new home. We went to lots of the nearby beaches, Willard beach becoming a quick favorite. We tried new foods, we went to local farmers markets, performances, shops, and events, we explored new places and went on walks and drives and even went kayaking with some of our new friends. When we weren’t out having fun, we could play with the cute fluffy black cat we had adopted from a local shelter. Life was awesome.

Podcasts and music helped the nine and a half hours of driving go by more quickly, but they didn’t mask the deep sadness that was taking over the day. Neither did trying to be excited about our next adventure. Logically I knew that we were making the right choice, and that we’d be happy to be back in Logan, but emotions rarely agree with logic. The heavy grief I felt was proof of that.

Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months. Before we knew it, we were a fourth of the way through our dream. Then halfway through. Then three fourths. The problem was, our love for Maine kept growing throughout. Living there was just so good! The beaches, the greenery, the food, the people, and the chance to feel like real adults away from our parents for the first time in our lives. Time was passing far too fast.

The long drive finally started to reach an end. When we had only 15 minutes left before getting to our hotel, another surge of emotions came, and tears streamed down my face once again. My wife held my hand and allowed me to feel it all. We had adored Maine, and withholding our emotions and tears would have been a disservice to the wonderful year we were leaving behind. However, that didn’t make feeling those emotions any easier.

I made a video of me walking through the apartment before we started packing. Those last few weeks were bitter-sweet as we made sure to go to all of our favorite beaches, places, and restaurants at least one more time before moving. We started taking more pictures and living more in the moment, which made that time as magical as the first few weeks had been. But before we knew it our final day had come, and it was time to pack our things into the moving truck and say our final goodbyes.

I was able to dry my tears as we pulled up to our hotel. My father-in-law had been driving the moving truck, while me and my wife had been in our car. We did our best to put smiles on our faces as we brought our suitcases and our tired cat into the hotel room, and then tried to figure out what to eat for dinner. We were all exhausted from the drive and needed food, but someone had to stay in the room with the cat, so I stayed while my wife and father-in-law left to get us Subway sandwiches. I used the time to look through my emails, including one from Reedsy with the weekly writing prompts.

We ate dinner with some of our friends who generously cooked us seafood for our last night on the coast. After spending time with them we went to say goodbye to one more couple before heading off to our hotel, where we’d spend the night since our apartment was already all packed up. While at their house, one of their sisters walked in and asked if we were sad or excited to move. It was a common question, and I gave my usual answer: “both.” But in that moment, our last night in Maine, the truth was that I felt no excitement. Only sadness and loss at a dream that was over far too soon.

I usually try to write a little bit each week, but my writing time had become packing time recently, so it had been a couple weeks since I’d written anything for Reedsy. I read the email with the prompts out of curiosity, assuming I’d have another busy week and wouldn’t be able to write. However, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what one of the prompts was. It was too perfect, too timely, and too real to not write something for it. So, I switched over to the notes page on my phone, and with tears starting to well up in my eyes once again I wrote the exact words I had said while driving away from my home that morning: “I wish we could stay here forever.”