Hi readers,
Ali and I started Letters from Home & Away because we missed each other. We also missed our community: a group of friends that gathered to ask questions, tell stories, and eat something tasty (usually baked by our friend Rebecca).
Introducing: essays from others. Every so often, weâll share a âguest essayâ from one of our friends. Youâll hear from someone else making sense of what it means to be alive right now in their corner of the world.
Speaking of community: If youâd like to write for us, or if youâve got a book we *must* review, let us know at lettersfromhomeandaway@gmail.com.
This weekendâs essay is by our friend Lauren Goff, and comes from Bailey Island, Maine.
âKate
Bailey Island, Maine is three miles long and home to a few hundred people. Generations of the same families live in tight-knit community, passing down family homes. The main industry is lobster, which locals buy off the wharf.Â
My family, like many, has been here for nine generations. People and places are identified through communal knowledge: we give instructions like "turn left where the Johnsons' barn used to be," and identify acquaintances by grandparents' names. There is no such thing as a true private life on Bailey Island, but there is also no such thing as true isolation.Â
I fled to the islands from New York City at the beginning of the pandemic. Friends appeared in our driveway, having heard of our arrival through the grapevine. They offered groceries from their pantries and crawled under our house to help diagnose our malfunctioning well pump.Â
Last month, Bailey Island made the news: a summer person, like myself, went swimming with her daughter in front of her house in Mackerel Cove. In the brisk Maine water, she wore a wetsuit. Suddenly, she was thrown up in the air by a great white shark, 20 yards from shore, presumably mistaken for a seal. SheâJulieâdied not long after.Â
Soon, the news trucks swarmed. Reporters from Boston breathlessly gathered first-hand accounts, speaking into microphones in front of the cove mouth. Unheard of, this far north. A first for the state. For those of us, like Julie, who love the islands, it is less sensational and more existential.Â
Life on Bailey Island is centered around the water. Lobstermen wake up before the sun to haul traps; families frolic in the waves on hot summer days. My mother used to talk about her childhood springer spaniel, Alex, lifeguarding from the shore. Decades later, I played with hermit crabs for hours on the same beaches where my mother played.Â
Mackerel Cove, where the attack happened, is a family favorite: a bustling fishing cove which is often a venue for cookouts and weddings. My mother learned to swim there, climbing over tuna bodies tied to the float as she launched herself into the water. Years later, my great uncle's ashes were scattered there. Even in my youngest days, when monsters lurked under the bed and the jury was out on other fantastical beings, the water was, largely, safe. My mother and I would swim out way above our heads, delighting in the cold, the exercise, the fullness of life.
I first heard the news while sitting on the beach. My mother had just been swimming and I had waded, looking out to sea. Frantically, a woman ran down to the beach and ordered people out of the water.
A shark had attacked in the cove where we were swimming.Â
A pause followed; two women, up to their shoulders in the ocean, said, "I doubt it." They kept swimming. Slowly, it hit us. We had seen an ambulance go down the road.
A little while later, a neighbor stopped by with more information. My mom asked the dreaded question: A local? Yes. I watched her exhale as she mentally ran through people she knew who lived in the area. The phone rang; friends accounted for their whereabouts. We heard the victim was a woman in her sixties who had been swimming with her adult daughter. I thought of my mother and me earlier that day: a woman in her sixties and her adult daughter, splashing in the cove.Â
Another neighbor, a first responder, texted from the scene. He said later that Julie's husband, Al, volunteered with the Fire and Rescue team when they were on the islands each summer. To the first responders, Julie and Al were family.Â
Several days after the attack, news vans still surrounded the area. Reporters tried to get quotes from local fishermen. Sometimes they succeeded; other times, they were met with Maine gruffness. My mother waded into the water but quickly returned. In the wake of covid we are shaken: we can only exist in a state of hyper-vigilance against so many existential threats, so many sadnesses. Julie's deathâand her family's unimaginable griefâmarked a break in the fabric of life.
The islands are a place of shared memory. When he was alive, my grandfather ran the local boatyard. He was the kind of man to do minor repairs for free, or teach local boys to use a saw if they hung around the boatyard for long enough. Though I never knew him, I have been the beneficiary of his generosity throughout my life. At various times, we have received help with a failed engine or free household work from a local, presumably repaying some favor my grandfather did for them long ago. These kindnesses have served as a reminder that Bailey Island remembers its own, long after they have passed.
My father offers stories of tragic deaths suffered by others in our community. Their names are passed down. A father and son swallowed by icy winter waves; a wife left to clean up after her husband's suicide. Death is always close, though we pretend it isn't. Freak accidents merely reveal the inherent brutality of lifeâa necessary complement to its many joys. I think of my compulsive measuring of six feet, my attempts to control when and how life will deal its next blow. No amount of alcohol spray or social distance can guarantee safety.Â
In the meantime, we will continue to fish, to swim. We will call one another, share news: who died, who got married, who had a baby. We will bring groceries in times of need. This eventâlike the tragic deaths that have gone before itâwill be woven into our communal narrative, made comprehensible by time and emotional distance. One day, children here will be told about the year of the global pandemic, the shark attack. They will feel the summer sun on their skin and splash in familiar tide pools.