Coming out for those who have come out

I write anonymously for a few reasons.  I started out that way because I didn’t know what I was doing and this seemed safer.  Then I got better at the writing part, but had trouble owning my words.  Now I’m improving on that, but I have concerns about how my writing might come back to haunt me, even though I work hard to never say anything regrettable.  While I am the opposite of big and important, I do have a job where I serve as a public face and I am stupidly Google-able.  So now I mostly continue behind my little veil out of a desire for the public appearance of respectability.

If you’ve been around a while, you may remember that the Alias Father didn’t even know that I had this blog for the first few months.  I eventually let him in on it, about the time that it started to feel like a Thing between us.  Now I’ve got another Thing, and I’ve pondered a while (too long, in some respects) about whether to address the Thing or not.  But I finally decided to lift the veil a bit, mostly because I don’t like Things.  But also because, dammit, sometimes a girl’s just gotta let it out.

Here’s the Thing:

I’m from Maine.

When I say that, I don’t just mean, oh here’s this nice place where I live and I generally like it.  I mean, I’m from Maine.  FROM.

What does it mean to be from Maine versus just being, you know, from Maine?  It, um, means stuff like this:

I am the daughter of a hunter, the granddaughter of a lobsterman, and the great-granddaughter of a sea captain’s widow who spent 60 years waiting for her husband to come home (hand to heart on that one).

I know what a lobsterboat smells like and why you should never, ever wear shoes you like on one.

I only eat lobster once or twice a year because, meh, but I’ll eat crab anytime I can get it.

I consider winter broken once I can smell the seaweed at low tide again.

I can spend a full week housebound by snow and ice and not even twitch.

I know what happens when 30-degree-below-zero air hits your nostrils and, frankly, I find it invigorating.

I can make whoopie pies, oatmeal bread, and a damn fine fish chowder.  Furthermore, I believe that no fish chowder will ever be proper again until Nabisco resumes making pilot crackers.  (Currently I make biscuits, but it is not the same.)

I have eaten moose.

I have had both Allen’s-and-milk and Moxie on more than one occasion, though I am not a fan of either.

I experience annually what watching the sun set at 3:30 in the afternoon does to your soul and, thus, I do not judge the people who do regularly drink Allen’s-and-milk and Moxie.

I know the proper usage of both “wicked” and “cunnin’” and use them periodically, though generally not together.

I have strong opinions on the matter of wool versus fleece versus down for winter wear and I will share them with you.

I own a couple token pieces of outerwear from L.L. Bean, but no actual clothing (hint: only people from Massachusetts wear full L.L. Bean ensembles).

I live in a house with exposed housewrap, a pile of trash and firewood in the yard, and a truck parked out front and my dog is hardly ever on a leash.

People.  I am from Maine.

I don’t know where else to be from, really.  I have lived other places, and may again, but the truth is that this place, this weird, cold, smelly place with food designed to kill you by age 50, is the only place I’ve found where I feel at home.  My ancestors go back here as far as there are records.  I have salt water in my veins, granite in my bones, and pine needles in my hair…and that last one isn’t always just poetic.  I consider myself to be of true Maine stock: resilient, circumspect, warm-hearted, and good humored.

And I’m very worried about my state.

Today, as you may know, Mainers will be voting on whether to repeal the gay marriage law that was signed by the governor this spring.  I liked his statement about it at the time.  I thought it upheld what I believe to be some of the finest qualities of Maine: our desire to be fair to all, our emphasis on keeping religious and governmental responsibilities separate (people, there’s a reason we left the Puritans behind in Massachusetts, okay?), and our heritage of respectful disagreement.  This is a place where people still get together at the annual town meeting to argue viciously and profanely with each other for several hours before sitting down to eat a potluck meal, pass the butter please, because we understand that different opinions do not necessarily make enemies.

The run-up to today has been ugly.  Hideously, shamefully ugly.  I’ve heard a lot of hateful and untrue things said on both sides, egged on in large part by non-Maine money.  Because this argument isn’t just about what rights the little state of Maine will or won’t allow to a minority, of course.  This is just the latest battleground in a national fight, and I suspect that’s how most people invested in the issue see it.  But when you take big fights and put them on tiny stages, those of us who perform on those stages feel a smidge overwhelmed.  To draw out the theater analogy further, stop groaning, it’s rather like we thought we were performing our play in the Congregational church basement, but when the curtain went up, all of a sudden we discovered we were in Lincoln Center.  And the audience was throwing rotten tomatoes.

I don’t know what this post is about, really.  It’s about my love for this place.  It’s about how disappointed I’ll be if my fellow Moxie-drinking actors let me down.  It’s about how saddened I am that my little state has become an ugly place because big interest groups see us as their pawns.  It’s about how, no matter which side wins tonight, the gloating and the tears will be the gloating and tears of my neighbors and how I don’t want to see that.  It’s about how concerned I am that the measured, compassionate, moderate words of our governor (who is also from Maine, which I respect though I do often disagree with him) have been long forgotten in our race to yell the loudest.

It’s about how I’m worried that no matter which way the vote goes, this place that I love will not be the same.

I think that’s what it’s about.

Or maybe it’s about how I need to go home and bake some whoopie pies and eat them all.

It’s very likely that this is what it’s about.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I voted No on 1.