6 October 2021
[Above photo: The place, ready for winter.]
Michael and I left the island with ease, having loaded most of our baggage onto Stella at high tide the night before. My cabin is buttoned up with solar panel stowed, water drained, antifreeze in the drainpipes, old sheets over everything, floors swept, and plywood over all three outer doors. The vegetable garden has had lime pellets, blood meal, seaweed, and fabric spread over it, the latter for weeds. Firewood is cut, split, stacked, and covered with a piece of metal roofing to dry for next year’s fires. All the bottles have been taken ashore and I sprinkled a biodegradable poison around each of the outer foundation piers to discourage carpenter ants. The ridge shingles I replaced this summer have survived several storms.
I’m now in Portland in my apartment, which is excellent. It is the 2nd (top) floor unit in an 1850’s house that the landlady has rehabilitated with insulation, new windows, refinished 15 inch pine floors, and attractive paint. I need to bring some of my own pictures (paintings, photos) to hang and purchase a hide-a-bed couch for my living room for visitors. Otherwise, I am very comfortable and anticipate a good winter.
I’ve located, with the help of Harold’s very generous and clever niece, a great bakery, THE bagel shop, the best place for fish, a dentist, and a car mechanic. I visited City Hall and changed the title of my car, registered it, paid two small parking tickets, got a neighborhood parking sticker, and changed my voter registration from Bar Harbor to Portland. Mainers in administration, I’ve found repeatedly, are pleasant, smart, helpful, and efficient. Nobody was surly. They are grinding their axes at home, or else someone else does their chopping.
The town of Portland hosts ½ the population of Berkeley, yet it seems larger and more metropolitan. I suppose it is older and was an important seaport for many years. I walked from my place in the West End to the other side of town, passing many interesting-looking restaurants, browsing through a used book shop and buying a few items at Reny’s, “a Maine institution” (No one was ill that I could see.). A stop at Standard Bakery yielded a croissant and an absolutely delicious marinated olive bread. How I missed good bread in Malawi and Myanmar! The walk home along the waterfront was quicker than I’d imagined. It’s a good walking town with many interesting old homes and buildings. Long walks, plus light weight work and the 7 minute workout from the NY Times, will keep me fit enough.
The above niece and her husband had me to supper at their truly lovely home in Cape Elizabeth. They were fun and friendly and the food was delicious. Their 15yo son, when he returned from a barbeque with friends, was adorable, showing me his gaming set-up which includes the computer he built last summer. It is difficult not to envy their domesticity and purpose: he’s an IT go-between for a large health insurance carrier, she’s an ER physician at Maine Medical Center. And both are parents of the 15yo and a daughter who is a sophomore in college.
Speaking of purpose, I’m looking for mine. My UNICEF gig ends at the completion of this month. I have offered to continue a consultation group for those therapists interested. I have also extended a similar invitation to my two child psychiatry training groups. I find that those in opposition to the military coup don’t want to be in the same group as those who are accepting of it (the minority), so I’ll do two different groups based on political opinions and actions.
While the child psychiatrists here are very welcoming, the child psychiatry fellowship at Maine Med has already assigned supervisors for the year so I’ll not find much to do there. I’m a little surprised because I suspect I am the most extensively-trained and experienced child psychiatrist in town, but I’ll move ahead deliberately and see how I can fit in.
Which leaves me seeking PURPOSE. I’ll keep my eyes open and, meanwhile, see if I can turn my Myanmar experience into something engaging for others to read. I suppose some might just enjoy the “Golden Years” and bless no deadlines or demands but I’m not cut of that cloth. I do look around and think, why am I rushing? I can spend every day exactly as I please, at the pace I choose. Unfortunately, it feels aimless to me, especially having just returned from helping to develop child and adolescent mental health services for an entire country. I suppose the sub-text is, also, I am without a mate to share the ease of this stage of my life so a good substitute is sharing what I have learned with a younger generation.
Speaker Pelosi’s skill and endurance in these toxic times is amazing. And Irish Joe not breaking stride, despite the provocations and temptations to fling down his glove. It would all be distracting from their important mission. And Zuckerberg stating he doesn’t value profit over children’s (or society’s) safety—who knew he had the capacity for such a wisecrack! And the earnest, moral, church-going mid-western politicians hiding the vast wealth of robbers from other countries in their states to provide…….what? Not a lot of jobs, I think. Maybe some bribes? Hoping some of that lucre will leak out? Hypocrisy, thy name is Gop. Really, I can think of types, not species unfortunately, of humans that I wish were extinct instead of the soft, harmless, seed-eating little birds we’ve deleted.
The Future of our Civilization, when I can bear to think about it, doesn’t seem rosy to me, although my immediate experience is very pleasant.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 