Here We Go!

Friday night we threw open our hearts and the doors of the 5th Maine and welcomed our first performers of the 2025 Series. Chris Moore, Peaks Islander emeritus, musical community builder and world class mandolinist brought his delightful presence with his most recent creative endeavor Yard Sauce out and performed a magnificent show. Our hearts and the house were full. On the eve of our daughter Lucia’s 23rd birthday- it was a lovely way to kick off our celebratory weekend.

It is with Chris’ support and encouragement I was able to consider bring the series back to life this year. His lifelong friendship forged through the years of daring to be just who we are in each other’s presence. His friendship and the friendship of his family is a solid foundational reality in my life. I am truly grateful for the experiences we’ve shared. A touchstone. In this life there are people and moments shared where the essence of our humanity and our connection with others is the fuel that keeps me going. Chris and his family are a touch stone in my life. Their friendship helped to weave my reality, past, present and with good fortune future. He has been one of the instrumental people as I’ve become the person I am today. I dare to be more myself with his good witness. Touchstones are there for us to come back to while life continues to move on.

Its humbling to shed versions of oneself. Lobsters and snakes shed old versions of themselves with regularity and seeming ease. Trees and plants and flowers shed themselves to make room for the fruits of new growth.

I accept that this is part of the beauty and inevitability of this life. For a longtime seeing myself as somehow separate form the oneness of all things, I now fully submit to the reality.

My inner critic always on the ready to cast dispersion toward my slow awakening to reality. I am somehow comforted by the awareness that this voice is a familiar voice of a brasher version of me from long ago. I now embrace that version of myself like I embraced and loved the confused child. the errant teenager, and the young mother for simply being who they are.

Strangely, it was a visit to the local running store led me to this awareness. Trying to describe my newer self by comparison to an earlier self- “I used to run thirty-miles a week…” That version of me never questioned her feet. Completely taking for granted their invincibility.

I tried to define and describe who I am today by comparing who I was at another time… I am after all still me. What I know now is I’m a softer, kinder, wiser and more open version of that person who still needs shoes- that somehow don’t define who I am and support me instead.

These five months hiatus have been a shortened lifecycle awareness. The recent death of my brother Patrick has slowed me. I’ve shed another layer and am keenly tuned into what this feels like.  So perhaps it was the shoes and the humbling experience of knowing where my feel is that helped bring me to this new acceptance, and in so doing I’ve been granted another chance to notice and more fully embrace this time.

This year’s series will be a reflection of this change. We will dance, and sing and listen together.