As the newly hired interim minister for the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor, Peter Ilgenfritz could never have imagined what was to come: within weeks of his arrival in January 2020, COVID-19 set in. Everything changed, and the church and Peter needed to change with it.

He was up to the challenge. 

The year before coming to Boothbay Harbor, Peter had left a 25-year career as pastor at a church in Seattle for an adventure: a 19,000 mile road trip through the United States. Though leaving was a daunting undertaking, Peter found the strength and courage he needed from—of all things—sailing.

Peter chronicles his journey in his upcoming memoir, Testing the Wind. In it he reflects on change and transition, on life and sailing.

Below is an excerpt from his soon-to-be released book.

A cold blustery day in mid-October 2013. A small wooden sailboat tips in the wind over a white-capped lake. Someone on board is yelling, a frantic cry that echoes across the water, “Are you sure? Are you sure this is alright?”

Sailing’s the last thing I thought I’d ever do. Although I’d spent most of my life near the sea, growing up on the North Shore of suburban Boston in the 1960’s and 70’s and in Seattle for the past two decades, I had never been interested in boats or being out on the water. I’ve never liked tippy things like roller coasters or skateboards. I especially don’t like wind. The howling and flapping of wind, the kind of wind that we’re having today, spitting rain from sheets of gray clouds that scurry across a dark sky.

But a few months before, I’d started thinking about what I might do on my sabbatical that coming winter when I’d have three months away from the church. I thought about all the familiar things I’d done on previous sabbaticals—trips to see family and friends, a study program abroad. And then I dreamt one night of me at the helm of a thirty-foot sailboat in the South Pacific, cresting the waves in a rolling blue sea. Behind me palm trees tossed in the breeze on white sandy beaches. The sun shone bright overhead. Nothing about the dream felt like me or anyone I’d ever wanted to be. Instead, it felt like a dream that had ended up in the wrong person’s imagination. I didn’t tell anyone about it.  

There are journeys in life we would never choose to take, but we do so anyway, because we know that our lives depend on our taking them. In a tippy little boat, on a tiny lake in downtown Seattle, I learned to sail. I discovered a practice that helped me let go of the life I had and discover a new life I’d never imagined. Along the way, I crashed into waves of grief and despair but did not drown. I was tossed by anxiety but did not die. Instead, I discovered parts of myself I’d never dared to embrace. Eventually, I learned what was on the other side of letting go.

Testing the Wind will be available through Ingram Press this fall. You can contact Peter at ilgenfritzpeter@gmail.com, and read more about his work at his website, www.NavigatingThroughChange.com.

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Cara McDonough has summered in Southport since she was a teenager, and kept a blog since her 20s. Motherhood left Cara with less time for personal writing, but COVID-19 has offered space for her to write more frequently.

“Other people keep journals or write in diaries, but for me it’s always more meaningful to have the words connect to somebody,” she says. “Something will happen and I can already feel myself writing about it in my head.”  Such is the urgency of the moment.

Cara has a knack for observing the meaningful in the everyday. What might pass others by, she zeroes in on, extracting significance from the seemingly mundane. She renders the incidental large, and captures our changing world in small domestic  details.

In it all, Cara offers an affirmation—we see ourselves woven into a larger fabric, transcending the isolation of the moment.

Cara posted Dear Pandemic Diary on her blog in June. The below is an edited version of that longer essay.

I keep urgently telling my children that we’re “living through history.” Yet it feels like the methods we are employing to make this period of history work are less poignant than what happened during other historic periods we all read about in school. 

I’m shouting about how this is “once in a lifetime” while they’re watching me put the computer on top of the pasta pot on the kitchen range so they can watch a slideshow from their school principal while they eat their breakfast. I’m trying with all my physical might to stifle a sneeze at the post office—because what will people think!?—and sighing wistfully about last summer, when sneezes were mere happenstance. I’m emptying the dishwasher for around the 300th time in a day, and my 11-year-old daughter is looking at me like, “Ok, mom, this does seem like a super important time,” and rolling her eyes.

But the stories worth recording aren’t always the obvious ones.

I keep thinking about how doing the right thing is often adopting small, deliberate actions as part of your daily life, for as long as that’s useful. That major shifts are often built from minor adjustments.

Take, for instance, the mundane, constant, reflexive giving of space. An action now taken regularly by many of us, and, to me, one of the most notable and endearing.

Stepping off the sidewalk and arcing in a semi-circle when I see an oncoming neighbor during a walk or run, allowing them to remain safe six feet or preferably more from where my feet land. The sidestep in the grocery store and awkward smile behind our masks. The excited approach when I see someone I know, but before the hug—now a seeming relic—we stop two arms lengths away. A new symbol of affection.

This small but consistent measure seems so minor in the grand scheme of this impossible situation. But we do it again and again, and in that repetition, I am told, there is critical effect. We do it over and over, and what happens is it works.

Cara McDonough is a professional freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Boothbay Register. Her personal writing can be found on her blog, caramcduna.

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Christy Shake has for nearly a decade been writing Calvin’s Story, a personal blog exploring (among other things) “motherhood, loss, disability, grief, justice, epilepsy, joy, resilience, gratitude and love.” Since starting it in 2010, she has written more than 2,000 posts and had more than one million visits to her blog.

Christy—the primary caregiver for Calvin, her and her husband’s 16-year-old son—knows something about hardship: Calvin was born with significant neurological problems, including epilepsy. Though few of us carry exactly the same responsibilities as Christy does with a severely disabled son, each of us has trials of our own—and all of us are affected by the strains of living with a life-threatening pandemic.

Christy’s wisdom is relevant for each of us: as Calvin’s mother, she has learned a thing or two about grace under pressure. Her writing reveals her to be an exemplar of self-awareness, and a  model for coping with adversity.

Christy posted Bones (reproduced below with her permission) in late May—just as gardens were beginning to bloom on the heels of a world shutting down.

Every morning I wake with achy feet. Who knows why. Stretching my Achilles tendons helps. Perhaps I’m growing into my mother’s soles and toes and various other arthritic bones perhaps exacerbated by having had six kids.

When turning my head I can hear and feel the grit and grind of gears in my neck, its sinews, bones, tissue and tendons as they crackle and pop like embers, or pebbles or sand underfoot. Should this be happening at fifty-six? My inner body is stiff—so unlike it used to be when both palms could press flat against the earth, shoes on, knees locked. My outer body is looser yet less elastic than in years past. And gravity is working on it. Thankfully, my aches and pains don’t usually last; they linger a bit, then disappear and show up later in another limb or joint and, like the seasons, the cycle repeats.

To add insult, Calvin flails and grabs and stomps, his hands and fists forever flying in my face, rigid fingers clasping at the back of my neck, scratching and digging in. Changes in his loose routine are sometimes met with frenzy. Or maybe it’s that his tummy hurts or that a seizure is “due.” I wish I knew. In any case, his grousing chaps my nerves. His clawing dogs me. His restlessness never gives in. Because he does not adequately see or fear or walk or reason, I have no choice but to follow in his ceaseless steps. Daily, I ask myself how long I can keep up.

Lauren stops by to see the garden. I had invited her to come in by way of the field in back. While admiring the blooming rhododendrons and budding azaleas, she and her dog keep their distance. From under her straw hat, she notes the garden’s control and structure, each shrub and tree’s careful placement, the meticulous pruning meant to make their branches thick and sturdy, the deliberate design of limb and leaf and blossom to work in concert with each other.

“Your garden has bones,” she says.

I tell her that they hold me up.

Christy lives in Brunswick, Maine. Follow Calvin’s Story on Facebook, or sign up to receive email notifications of new posts by Christy from the home page of Calvin’s Story.

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“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

—Stephen King

Watching for the birds is an act of patience.

A red-shouldered hawk flies over the shore. Chipping sparrows are at the feeder off and on. Orange slices wait the return of a pair of Baltimore orioles—they ate an entire navel orange yesterday.

I need the birds to remind me that being still—waiting and watching—is part of living.

So much beauty surrounds us here. Forsythia’s yellow limbs stretch and wave toward the cloudy sky. Twin birch trees grow their catkins and tiny chartreuse green leaves by the side of the house. Day lilies increase in number in three-year temporary beds in the fenced vegetable garden. Divided, they will brighten our new hillside and the community field.

The dining room table is still covered with fabric scraps waiting to be made into masks to wear in public. My daughter wears one I made for her. I worry that she is at risk at the grocery store—could she be exposed or bring COVID to us on the food packaging?

I’m glad I’m not cooped up in a small apartment in a city. I can work in the yard, go for walks and see no one. The UPS man may deliver boxes to our front porch; I left him a recipe for sweet potatoes we make often. His wife loves sweet potatoes. This week the grocery had none, nor yellow potatoes, nor Poland diet drinks—only some vitamin water at four times the price.

I never know what will be available.

Gardens are never static, and gardening fulfills my need to be physically active. My big garden plan is to move one plant a day into it (surely the pandemic will be over before I finish moving plants?) I may work steadily for eighteen months—there will always be more to do in my garden. It is a growing thing.

I am patient.

Patricia McHold is a writer, artist, and gardener who lives in East Boothbay, Maine.

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“From away.”

I heard that phrase again this week—a hard-working community member deeply invested in educating the region’s children used the term (half-apologetically) to describe herself.

I first heard it last summer when an older man dropped it casually in conversation, cautioning me in my eagerness to become part of my new community: “They’ll never accept us PFAs.”

After more than 50 years, he still feels unaccepted by some.

To hear this kind person who had reached out to welcome me tell me so plainly that some of my new neighbors would never consider me “from here” was jarring (and that there’s a commonly used acronym for “people from away” was even more so).

I arrived on the peninsula a year ago after essentially throwing a dart. I had spent five decades of summers in the Lakes Region, and though I had no previous connection to this area, Maine is Maine, and here is where I now make my home.

My new friend’s comment was especially vexing as it runs completely counter to my life experience. I have lived all but a dozen of my 56 years in residential school communities where people come and go every year. They are from all over the world—their skills and interests vary wildly, and their experiences and stories are endlessly fascinating. I grew up constantly folding new folks into my life, giving what I could and gaining immeasurably, and I am far, far better for it.

I am, therefore, a firm believer in the fundamental importance of embracing the whole human family—and it’s clearer than ever right now what we lose when we intentionally exclude others. I know we are stronger together, as a nation and on our little peninsula.

So here in my Southport home, I will continue doing all of the things that make communities true and healthy and strong. I will say hello to you on the road. I’ll stop and chat if you’re working in your garden (and offer to help—unless you’re weeding). I’ll bring you soup, and gladly accept your fresh bread in return. I’ll offer (or ask for) directions or recommendations. I’ll cheer the new graduates, and mourn those we lose. I’ll look around to see who doesn’t seem included in the daily life of this wonderful place, and I’ll think on why.

And I won’t use the term “from away” to describe myself or anyone else.

—Leigh Perkins

Leigh Perkins is a writer and teacher at Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts, who spends as much time as she can at her Southport Island home.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how the tools that helped me deal with pain and depression have equipped me for this moment—the gifts that come out of adversity; the talismans you rely on when the road is full of branches and stones.  

The first tool—surrender—helps me access tranquility. When I notice that I’m resisting something, I visualize myself clinging to a branch hanging over a river, my arms tired from holding up my weight while half of me dangles in the current. I look at the swirling water and know what I need to do. I drop into the churning river, trusting in the flow to carry me safely.  Soon I’m able to use the current to my advantage, finding a clear path down the river. Resistance is what’s painful—surrender provides relief and peace.

Poetry, my most valuable and enduring tool, is my Swiss Army Knife—useful in myriad ways. In this time of a mysterious pandemic and tremendous pain over racial injustice and economic hardship, I find comfort in the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and his play The Cure at Troy, from which I share an excerpt here:

 History says, Don’t hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

I have committed these lines from his poem to heart, and hope they will speak to you as well.

—Ann Bracken

Ann Bracken, a writer who lives in Columbia, Maryland, loves vacationing in Maine and facilitates community writing workshops, including one at Coastal Studies for Girls in Freeport.

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“Only connect.”

—E. M. Forster, in the epigraph to A Room with a View

When the quarantine arrived, I—like many others—worried about the implications.

I have been facilitating book groups for more than 20 years, including the past 3 years for the Maine Humanities Council’s “Let’s Talk About It” program at the Boothbay Harbor Public Library. In 2018, we started with mysteries set in diverse cultures; last year it was a series about Cuba. This year: “Re-Imagining the American Family,” with five different books including graphic novels, poetry, and memoir.

When you bring a group of people together to discuss literature, magic happens: perspectives are shared, worldviews are expanded, friends are made. The willingness to share—and listen—are the hallmarks of a successful book group.

We have had a core group of devoted participants at the Boothbay Harbor Public Library since year one. Subsequently, new people have joined; we have a range of 8 to 15 attendees at any given gathering. Everyone has been unfailingly generous, enthusiastic, and kind. Add the cozy library setting and its topnotch staff, and it is little wonder I love our Boothbay Harbor Public Library reading and discussion program.

That is why—when the shutdown arrived and our program was disrupted—I was crushed. We had only discussed two of the five books! What would become of the community we had built? How could we continue on lockdown?

As it turned out, I need not have worried.

Soon, group members were asking to carry on via Zoom. While not as intimate as being together in the library, our remote sessions have allowed us to continue making connections in the readings and with each other. It seems continuing with our group is vital—as one participant put it, “especially under these current societal limitations.”

We need books and our conversations about them now more than ever. They foster something fundamental to our humanity: to only connect.

—Larissa Vigue Picard

Larissa Vigue Picard has been executive director of Brunswick’s Pejepscot History Center since 2015. 

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In the past two months I have had opportunities for silence and sole companionship.

Being separated from others all these weeks is not something I expected, planned, or wanted. The very idea of such solitude entirely contradicts my entire pre-COVID experience. My life (and likely yours) is tethered to relationships. My material possessions have never seemed more irrelevant to me than they do now—what matters most is people. We are hardwired to live and be in relationships.

And though I will never grow accustomed to social isolation, I use the term “sole companionship” intentionally. It conjures a somewhat more positive image than, say, “being alone.” For the truth is, I find there are things to enjoy and embrace in these days of only being accountable to me; there are comforts of a life with only myself. These are silver linings.

But I am determined to become neither complacent with nor resigned to this sole companionship.

A true benefit in all of this is my renewed sense of what is most important: we now know better than ever how much we all matter to one another. Though the grief and mourning for the losses we have endured will accompany us into our new normal, our relationships and connections will be stronger—our bonds tighter for all we have been through.

I miss the people I love with great intensity. When we finally are able to hug again, it will be so powerful—we will put so many broken pieces back together again.

—  Holly Stover

Holly Stover is a member of Yarrow & Cleat’s Advisory Team. Her bio can be seen here.

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We have been at risk of allowing COVID-19 to dictate our every move. I have wondered how we can change from a reactive position to a proactive one—I do not want to end up a quivering mess huddled behind my chair in the living room hypnotized by the “Breaking News” on my television.

I cannot live my life like that.

Instead, I choose to stand on a corner in my inflatable Sumo suit with a sign that reads: “Laughter Is the Best Medicine.”

For me, a heartfelt “hello” works wonders. Waving to someone as they drive by whether I know them or not; saying hello to someone while at the same time respecting the parameters we must live with right now; sharing a smile with someone who’s not smiling. If you find yourself driving down the road and some stranger waves at you, it might be me (I hope I made you smile).

I watch the news because I need to stay informed, but I also need to be lifted up. We all need to be lifted up. What lifts you up?

We are social creatures. We all need a little light in these dark times. I try to share mine. It helps me, and I hope it helps you.

– Tom Dewey

When not on the corner in his Sumo suit, Tom Dewey is hard at work producing multiple videos each week for the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor. As much of church life has necessarily moved online with COVID-19, Tom’s long-held position as Worship Streaming Technician has morphed into something requiring much more of him. He has stepped up, as the parade of videos on the church’s homepage makes clear. 

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Today I had the accidental gift of seeing one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen.

She was a lovely older woman in the Maine winter uniform—boots, jeans, and padded vest.

My glimpse of her over the hood of my car was like the click of a camera’s lens.

In that shot, I saw a smile radiating happiness, peace of mind, calm, and closure—

A smile that said, “All’s right with the world.”

Its pureness stopped me in my tracks.

When my mind turns that snapshot into a video vignette, the camera zooms out to reveal this beautiful woman slowly swinging her arm,

And releasing her big black plastic garbage bag into the horrendous-smelling trash pit of our town landfill.

Once again, I am reminded of the small but life-changing blessings of ordinary days.

– Marion Coleman

Marion Coleman moved to Boothbay Harbor as a year-round resident in 2017. She came from Texas, where she had a career as a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, a program officer at a private foundation, and a nonprofit executive director. She is “desperately trying to transition from 40 years of professional and academic writing and publishing to writing that someone might actually enjoy reading.” 

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