Many years ago, when we were living in Pennsylvania, my wife read an article in DownEast Magazine about spending Christmas on Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. I am originally from MDI, and I and my family had been going there for an annual vacation for the past several years, so I called the landlord of the cottage we had been renting in Southwest Harbor. Naturally, it was available and he agreed to a one-week rental over Christmas.
The 600-mile trip to MDI took two days, with an overnight stop in Freeport to give us the opportunity to go to LL Bean (the place is open 24/7, and there is a very colorful crowd there in the middle of the night). There were three of us: myself, my wife and my (then) six year old daughter. When we arrived at the cottage, which was on the waterfront in Southwest Harbor, it had snowed and the surroundings, which were always a pretty site, were even more beautiful.
As we were unloading the car, my wife slipped in the snow next to the car and fell, injuring her right leg. She had severe pain in her right ankle, and was crying. She was unable to stand or walk, so we used my daughter's sled (which had been brought to use on the little hill above the cottage) to move her the short distance from the car to the cottage. My daughter and I helped her into the living room to sit on the sofa. The ankle was quite swollen and painful to the touch, and was either severely sprained or (considering the amount of pain) fractured.
My wife is a social worker and a professional therapist, and is absolutely amazing when she is helping other people. When dealing with her own issues, though, she is not what one would describe as "the sturdy oak of the family". She vacillated between wanting to immediately return to Pennsylvania and wanting to stay at the cottage so she "wouldn't ruin our vacation". Since it was getting late on Saturday afternoon, going back to PA wasn't much of an option, so we brought our luggage into the cottage.
The cottage is an A-frame design, with the bedrooms on the second floor. The stairway upstairs is quite steep and there is no handrail, so my wife was going to be spending the night on the sofa. Needless to say, it was a long night of constant pain and almost-constant complaining. It was obvious to me that this was no sprain, and she needed medical attention. On a Sunday on Mount Desert Island in December, though, options were limited to the hospital in Bar Harbor.
My daughter and I helped my wife into the car for the 12-mile drive to Bar Harbor. We went to Mount Desert Island Hospital (where I was born) and checked in at the small Emergency Department. MDI Hospital is small and quaint; there was no physician on duty in the ED; there was a Physician Assistant on duty, and a physician was available at home to come in if needed. The PA was quite good, completing her exam and ordering X-rays. When the X-rays were done, even I could look at them and tell that her leg was broken (it turned out to be fractured in 3 places). The PA applied a splint, gave my wife crutches, and referred us to an orthopedic practice in Ellsworth for the next day.
The next day, in Ellsworth, my wife got a walking boot to replace the temporary splint, but was told not to put any weight on the leg for several weeks. The drive back was spent discussing whether to stay or go back to PA. My wife made the decision to stay, knowing she would be restricted to the cottage.
My daughter and I decided to do our best to make it a nice Christmas for my wife. We had planned on having a Christmas tree in the cottage (we had brought along a Christmas tree stand), so Becca and I went out to get a tree. We found a place that was selling trees, brought one back to the cottage, set it up, and decorated it with decorations we had brought from PA.
For gifts, I had planned on getting my wife some things in Bar Harbor, so my daughter and I drove there to do some shopping. If you have never been to Bar Harbor, it is a bustling tourist town in the summer and fall but, in the winter, it is pretty much a ghost town, with many shops and restaurants closed up. The Acadia Shop was open, though, and that's where we went. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, and got to chatting with the clerks. When I described what had happened to us, the customer service went up a notch. They could not have been more helpful, and insisted on gift-wrapping everything we bought for my wife. Mission accomplished.
While my wife was confined to the cottage, Becca and I drove around the island, visiting parts of Acadia that were open as well as other parts of MDI that were not part of the park. We also visited our former neighbors, the Beals, in Southwest Harbor.
Uncle Buzzy and Aunt Prue own Beals's Lobster Pier, which buys lobsters from the lobstermen and resells them to restaurants locally and around the country. They live in a large house that has cedar shingle siding and was, according to Uncle Buzzy, at one time located at the opposite of the lane at Fernald Cove. He told us that, in 1913, it was disassembled, placed on horse-drawn carts, and moved to its' present location. It's definitely the kind of house any of us would love to own.
Anyway, Christmas day in the cottage was quite nice. Liz loved the gifts, and we were glad to be together as a family, even though it didn't turn out exactly as planned.
Later in the day, there was a knock at the door, and it was Aunt Prue and her daughter, Suzanne (who used to babysit me when I was a toddler). They had decided to bring dinner for us, so they had gone to the lobster pier and picked out lobsters for all of us. They were steamed, with the shells cracked to make eating them easy. With rolls and butter, it was a fantastic meal, and very much appreciated.
Today, when you mention "Christmas in Acadia" to my wife, her right ankle hurts, but there are plenty of good memories about the experience. We probably wouldn't do it again, but it was definitely a nice idea and something we will never forget.
