The Pillow

Today is, in some ways, my first “real” day living in Maine. I’m certainly having conflicting feelings about my move. On the one hand, I’m sleeping better….and a lot more. N and I took a nap every day this weekend. I don’t know if it’s the fresh air or what, but something about Maine makes me tired. Could be that I’m so much less stimulated that I’m also a lot more relaxed. Or the feeling that a major milestone in my life has passed, and I’m letting that sink in. I don’t know. I feel like my life is going in slo-mo. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

N flew back to New York last night, after spending the weekend and Monday and Tuesday helping me settle in. It’s really amazing how many people have helped me out in this move. My brother Rick and my dad arranged to have me take over Rick’s old Volvo, so now I have a car. My aunt Ingrid gave me my cousin’s bed frame, so now, actually for the first time in a decade, I’m sleeping on more than just a mattress and box spring. She also gave me a microwave and a couple of good pans. (She is in the process of moving to Portland, OR, where her husband will be working at a green architecture firm, so was more than happy to offload some stuff.) Soo’s boyfriend gave me a large color TV—I just had to scrape his kids’ finger paint off the screen. Amazing how things come together sometimes. And such generosity and helpfulness on the part of my family and friends.

Anyway, N and I drove to Maine Saturday. We stopped in Providence, to pick up the bed frame, then drove down to Westport, MA, to my dad’s house to pick up my old IKEA desk and thrift store kitchen table. We finally made it to Portland at about 11:30 that night, after taking a wrong turn in the final stretch (when it comes to directions, the two heads of N and I are not better than one).

We unloaded the car that night. Since it was so late, and the street I live on is so quiet, we didn’t worry too much about leaving the back of the car open while we brought stuff upstairs. But the next day, we looked around and noticed that the long pillow my aunt gave me that went with the headboard of the bed was nowhere to be found. We checked the car, checked under and around all of my still unpacked boxes. Nowhere. And then I remembered that there was this one group of people walking up the hill, making some noise, while we were unloading. A group of 20-somethings, it seemed, who sounded like they’d been out drinking. Though it seemed improbable, we surmised that in a fit of drunken chicanery, they must have thought it would be funny to take the pillow.

For the next two days, we were still puzzling over whether this was the correct explanation for the mysterious disappearance of the pillow. Then, on the following cold and rainy Monday morning, on our way back home from the Hilltop Coffee Shop, we saw the pillow draped over a chain link fence in someone’s front yard, wet from the rain, its distinctive floral pillow case still intact. We took the wet pillow home, washed it off and put it in the dryer, and put it in its rightful place on the bed. It was as if it had never left us. I don’t know if it’s comforting or not to have something stolen and then recover it. But it was some sort of welcome to the neighborhood.

I’m adding a picture of my Monday night. N and I played Scrabble by the light of the ship’s lantern he bought me at New York Nautical in Tribeca. Fun!