Maine native longs for nature in New York

Editor’s Note: “Letter From …” is a monthly column written by a Mainer, or person with ties to this state, who is living or traveling far from home. Caitlin Shetterly grew up in Surry. She now lives in New York where she is an actor, writer and waitress.

When the radio alarm clock goes off at 6:30 in the morning, the news (in French for some annoying reason) surges through my body like a sickness. I feel the bed heave as my boyfriend turns on his side and pulls away from me into a ball as far away from the alarm as he can get. Panic and dread course through my mind as in the half-light of mid-December I talk myself into getting out of bed, pulling on my all-black attire and leaving the radiator warmth of our apartment to travel 11 blocks downtown to arrive on time (we are told that we will be fired for lateness) at 7:30 for my waitressing job at French Roast Bistro and Restaurant. I will never grow accustomed to this.

When I emerge into the cold air, a few brave souls and even more eager beavers are already out beginning their days with either a bang or a whimper, depending. As I trudge up my block to the subway on 96th Street and Broadway, a jogger passes me just as I light up my first Camel of the day. I pass The Salvation Army where a truck loiters and men are already unloading crates of items to be priced, put on shelves, and sold to an enormous volume of customers; in fact, most of the furniture in our apartment was bought here. I make a mental note to stop in on my way home

– somewhere between 4 and 5 in the afternoon – to see if they have any nice bedside tables, lamps, or vases.

When I get to the corner, I see across the street that the Christmas tree vendors are awake and drinking deli coffee as they breathe puffs of steam into the gray air. The holiday lights strung across of the frame of their wooden stand twinkle blue and yellow. I wonder if they are from Maine. I am glad to see them once again this year because they remind me of home. In this concrete jungle I’ve chosen (foolishly, I sometimes think) to make my home, the fact that it pains me to see loads of living trees carted from up north to be sold and decorated and then left on the streets by Jan. 1, pales in comparison to the joy I feel when I stand close to these clusters of trees, close my eyes for a moment, inhale and pretend I’m in the forest near my childhood home on the coast of Down East Maine.

This past Thanksgiving, my mother made the nine-hour trek from Maine to New York City where she joined my brother and myself at my boyfriend’s parents’ home for the turkey dinner. It was strange being in a home that was not the one I grew up in, with my mother as a guest rather than a bustling and harried hostess. I felt a wave of sadness as I stood by the elevator with my boyfriend’s parents, watching my brother and mother disappear behind the closing door, going out into the impersonal dark night in a city untouched by their presence.

My boyfriend and I will be driving up to Maine for Christmas. This will be his first time in my home state, the first time he will see the house I grew up in where my mother still lives, and the house where my father lives a few towns away. We plan to cut a tree with my mother – early this year (meaning before Christmas Eve) – at “U-Cut, 5$” on Route 172 between Surry, where we live, and Ellsworth, where we shop. As usual, my mother will give her pitch for finding a dead tree which we would “bring to life” with lights and ornaments. Although the traditionalist in me rejects the idea, as I grow older, I begin to see the beauty of her image.

As a compromise, we agree to cut one at the tree farm where we can also buy a wreath. This way we let the trees on our own land flourish. But when I was a little girl, my brother, mother, father and myself would trudge out behind our house and wander for hours to find what we considered the perfect Christmas tree – height, width, color, breadth of branches, and star-perching capability were all seriously considered. After hours of deliberation, as darkness fell, we would finally make our way home to our warmly lit house banked with snow, taking turns pulling a large sacrificial fir behind us. We brushed snow off the branches, carried the tree inside, heated cider and began to unpack the boxes of ornaments.

These days, as my career and life seem to solidify in the city, I wonder sometimes if someday I will be a New York parent, two small children in tow, out on the corner paying $100 for a tree from Maine which fits all of my childhood criteria. I wonder what Christmas will mean to these children I have not yet had. I wonder if having this holiday detached from the natural world will still feel as meaningful, or if it will seem like it is a celebration the way I remember.

Each day I pass in New York, I miss the land that I grew to love as I would love a sibling or a grandparent in my childhood, adolescent and teen-age years. At the restaurant where I work, more than half the staff comes from somewhere else – some from states as far away as California and others from countries such as France, Australia, Israel and Ecuador. I imagine that they, like me, carry their sense of home and place like I do, in a safely protected heart-space that holds a bittersweet combination of nostalgia and pride.

These days as I lie in bed before sleep, I anticipate crossing from New Hampshire into Maine in the coming days. I think of the pointed firs, the snowy hills, the craggy shores, the fields dotted with forgotten hay bales and shaggy cows, and the houses along the road decked with Christmas lights, each one outdoing its neighbor. But mostly I can’t wait until our car slows, we make a left onto our long driveway, drive through the dark and silent trees, and pull up to the house, all brightly lit, our dog William barking, my mother in the doorway and our cat Oscar sprawled next to the wood stove, a catnip toy in his paw.