The air smells like sea and seaweed and grass. There are two seagulls who come every summer to visit with my SIL. They know her and wait for her arrival and then shift into the *summer routine* which is means come on the deck railing and waiting for breakfast or dinner.  They sit on the roof of that little house and watch for her. If I get up and go out before she is up, they don't come, they wait.

She cooks oatmeal and cottage cheese for them. She saves the lobster shells for them, but only after she has boiled them to make broth for lunchtime soups. They come for meals, they poop on the deck and my brother goes out and scrubs the wood so where we sit is always clean. I sit on the stuffed deck chair with my morning coffee and read the paper. I don't know what is happening with the paper scene yet. Apparently, the process of distributing the NY Times from the ferry has been more difficult since the paper store went out of business. The Guardian will come on Monday with the mail. My brother has his mail forwarded once a week from Florida.

These are the types of big questions that face us on the Island although reading matter is never an issue because the library runs a second hand book store that smells like musty books but has wonderful treasure from the summer people who clear out their collections at the end of the summer. Last year someone left the whole series of the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency and I spent evenings savoring the wonderful stories.

It is a time of deep rest. There is no cell service for the phone. Time is marked by the tides moving in and out. There will be a hot dog and bean supper at the church. It is important to go early if you want to get a piece of Milly's blueberry pie. The church ladies have the process down. I think they have been doing it for 80 years, every other week on Thursday night. There are larger beans and tiny pea beans, and pale pink hotdogs boiled and served in church china bowls, There is coleslaw that always tastes the same. The water is served from ribbed plastic pitchers. I imagine that those of you who go to church suppers know exactly what I mean.

Bobby, the lobster man comes with his wife and sons and daughter. The daughters of the Islanders are sturdy, strong young women. Sometimes I sit down by the dock and watch them as they unload the boats and put the lobsters into blue crates and sort them on strings that are thread around a place on the edge of the cove. They are held until they are put in the tanker truck and then taken to the mainland to go south to distributors. The tanker truck is an 18 wheeler and goes out on the last ferry of the day. It takes up the whole center of the ferry, slipping into its slot. Islanders know not to book their cars for the last ferry of the day because there won't be room. The regular summer people know how to manage. They keep a junker car on the island and the regular car over in the parking lot at the ferry dock. They cross over to go to Home Depot and such stores for supplies. The UPS truck comes on the 9:30 ferry so other goods come then. 

If we call Bobby and tell him we want lobster, he brings them up to his house from the boat. We go up at 5 to get them, and they pull them from the tank at the house. Four lobsters for $10, sometimes $12 depending on the market. I don't eat lobster anywhere but Maine. Once you have had unstressed lobsters caught that day, you never want to eat anything but that. We won't have corn because it is too early, but we have vegetables grown by the young people who are farming now. And Maine has wonderful potatoes. We take out the big boiler and get the plates with the lobster pictures on them. It is all part of what happens.

Maine and New Mexico are the two sides of my soul, the sea and the sky and mountains. Both fill me.