Kate Flora: Summer can be a time of leisure, and with that leisure comes remembering. Lately I’ve been surprised to find myself saying, “Fifty years ago, I did this.” Or “Sixty years ago was the summer that I worked in the blueberry processing plant, having graduated from being in the fields raking.” Or, when it was on the news recently, thinking about where I was in 1969 when we landed on the moon—I was watching it on my tv in a crummy apartment in Columbus, Georgia. This summer I’m feeling the heartbreak of selling two lakefront lots, part of the family farm where I used to ramble in the summers more than seventy years ago.

Last week’s author trip out to Vinalhaven reminded me of the summer I spend working on Islesboro for some eccentric New York millionaires. People who left their clothes and bath towels on the floor. Had untrained dogs that left something else on the floor. We were given the strangest outfits to wear for the workday and for serving at dinner parties. We carried irons to smooth the sheets when we turned down the beds, aligned the window shades exactly in the center, and always had Brasso and rags to polish all the brass that constantly corroded in the damp sea air. I had my first Manhattan there, from a couple I met at a dance. It was the summer  was a candidate for Maine Blueberry Queen.

Me in the dress I wore to serve dinner guests on Islesboro. Here with John & Sara

I often think about how different my rural Maine childhood was from those of most of the people I know. Summer was all about agriculture, from planting and weeding to picking and processing all the food we grew to put it away for the winter. Always, in my mother’s words, “the long, cold winter.” Summers were for working. First, raking blueberries. Then one summer at a writer’s camp in Pemaquid, assisting in the kitchen, where I make bread for all the guests. Then in the blueberry plant. August was the Union Fair, where working in the Methodist Church luncheon booth was part of the fun. Where my mother’s brochure of blueberry recipes was handed out during the blueberry festival.

Those long ago Maine summers brought visitors from New York and New Jersey, coming for a week of eating fresh food and rambling through the fields and swimming in the pond. There would always be lobster day, when my father would ask us how many lobsters we wanted and then drive down to the coast to pick them up. We would put extra leaves in the big table in our unfinished shed, where we ate in the summer, and cover it with newspapers. There would be big bowls on the table for the shells. While John and I and Sara held lobster races on the kitchen floor, dad would ask us how many ears of corn we wanted, and go down to pick it. Soon two huge pots would be steaming on the six burner stove—the graniteware canner for the lobsters and a big Revere ware pot for the corn. Melted butter and cabbage salad completed the meal. There would usually be pie, even though lobster dinners should have been enough. Blueberry pie, of course.

Summer would be my first flip flops, a second hand gift from those out of state visitors. Afternoon swims in the pond with whoever was hot and needed a place to swim and sometimes the illicit pleasure of skinny dipping after dark. Working as a chambermaid at Whitehall Inn in Camden. Dances at the Rockland Rec Center and pizza at King’s.

This is my birthday weekend. I’ve decided a week-long celebration is required for a big number birthday. Lots of good friends. Funny presents. Swimming in the sea and cocktails on the deck. Fish and chips at Cook’s Lobster House, then after dinner drinks with neighbors to watch the sunset. And although there was a birthday cake, I also made a blueberry-peach pie, with Maine wild blueberries, which we had for breakfast. Because after all, who wouldn’t really rather have pie for breakfast than most things?