Two hundred years after landing on Plymouth Rock, a number of them had found their way to Maine and in the 1820s, Isaac Carter homesteaded an island just off the coast. The farmhouse still stands and the island, farmed until about the time my grandparents arrived, is now a family vacation home.
It's the place my wife, Dottie, feels most at home, having made the drive north and the row across the channel since she was a little girl. My son, Jon, also feels the island is his home.
And this year, Jon's son, Matthias, having turned one last Sunday will set foot for the first time on the beach at Grandpa's Cove, the rocks of the Foreshore, the chilly water in Merry's Bathtub, the front room of the White House, and the rest of the familiar island landmarks. (Still in diapers, he will get a pass and not have to cross the threshold of Trail's End--the island has no indoor plumbing.)
Dottie, Jon, and (eventually) Matthias feel the connection to the island in a much deeper way than I do, though I've been going up there for 35 years. It's their heritage in a way that it will never be mine. I'm family by marriage; Dottie, Jon, and Matthias are family by blood.
How odd to use that phrase, "by blood," in 2013 when the word on the street is that a family is whatever you'd like it to be. "Love makes a family," we're told. Well, actually, no. Love may make for a happy family, but marriage, adoption, or, above all, blood make a family. And from our families we receive our identities. Family has to do with you we are, not who we'd like to be. Family is our roots whether we like it or not.
And the island--including all the family dynamics and issues that go into managing a shared property--is a reminder for Dottie and Jon of their identity. And, one day, the same will be true for Matthias. Or at least I hope so.
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