So this (above) just happened! When we sat in the back of that car with Bruce on that below-freezing night in December, watching his home disappear behind the flames - the air temperature too cold for the firetruck hoses to do much besides freeze solid - I told him that there was no question he was coming home with us. "You're family, Bruce....we'd be happy to have you." I'm not sure that in that moment I thought it would be a six month stay (in fact, I'm sure I didn't). But that's exactly what it ended up being, Bruce having just moved into a new home in the same spot as his last mobile home, on the land where his old farmhouse once was, just this week.
When we first moved to the farm, and this new-to-us area of Maine, eight years ago this September, I think we (Steve and I) thought we'd find our people here. And by that, I think we meant people just like us. I feel foolish saying that now, but it was the truth. I thought tucked into the woods here and there all around us, we'd find other homesteaders, maybe even some homeschoolers, but certainly people with similar values and daily lives to ours, just exactly like the folks and community we spent our time with in Portland. We didn't find that. At first, I was sad about that, and even a little lonely. For a moment, we questioned our decision to move here. And then slowly, as time went by and the years have come and gone, we've settled into it as it is, and embraced the way in which driving to our friends and activities is a trade off for where we live and what we have here. But also, in that time, we've come to find a different community - a community of people NOT just like us. A community I was never expecting. And that, well that's been a greater gift and blessing than I ever could have imagined. Rural living has a way of doing that, I think - there simply aren't enough people for us to only be amongst people "just like us,' safe in our isolated little bubble of likemindedness!
Instead, we found ourselves with an 85 year old Maine man sitting at our dinner (and breakfast and lunch) table each night for the past six months, adding tall tales and wild stories (and sometimes questionable ones too) to our lives and our children's minds. We've gotten to know countless of his hunting buddies that are our neighbors, our community, no matter how clearly politically divided we may be on the outside (something that previously might have kept us from even knowing one another?). And while so many people have said we've given Bruce such a gift, I argue strongly that it's he who has given us the gift, that he started giving the day we met him eight years ago. He is the one who welcomed us here with open arms from the moment we showed up here - no judgment from that lifelong Mainer, farmer, and father about all the foolish things we attempted and sometimes failed at because, well, we had no idea what we were (are) doing. No raised eyebrows at my wild children in the dooryard, not going to school. And absolutely, he was always there to lend a hand, a tractor, a tool, whenever we needed it. I have not been the most patient of a hostess always, I hope you know. I am far from as perfectly gracious as I would like to be, but I'm learning about what community means and what being a good neighbor is. And I'm learning from the people around me, right here where I am. Our people.
The kids have tucked Bruce properly into his new home next door, taking with him the boxed cereal my teen children loved to 'borrow' from him late night (he says they can walk over for breakfast sometimes, which I am certain they will take him up on). And my own house rearrange has begun to fill that empty space up (and Gram comes back for her summer visit soon! Yay!). But this time together has been something we'll all always remember, I know without a doubt. I'm so grateful.
