I had never really been all that interested in lighthouses before. They were New Englandy, which was nice, and they kind of represented lobster and clam chowder, which was even better, but it wasn't as though I'd plan a vacation around them or especially seek them out. They were just kind of there.
Things changed a couple of years ago when my grandmother died. I was pretty close to her growing up, considering she had lived with us for several years during my childhood. She had since moved on to another relative's house and then a couple of nursing homes before she finally passed away at age 98. I had a few things from her - other than memories, of course. Some beautiful, antique furniture. A gold necklace my parents had given her years ago.
When my aunt visited her brother to go through some of Nana's other belongings, I had one request. I wanted a painting. Before having children, she had been an art teacher, had studied at Worcester Art Museum and everything, and even after she became a housewife, she still regularly painted. Most of her stuff were landscapes, pictures she had taken out of magazines and calendars and tried to recreate with a brush and canvas. There were some exceptions, and to be honest, I wasn't picky. I wasn't looking to enhance my house's decor with some sweet art; I was simply looking for a memento that I could hang up someplace to remind me of Nana.
My aunt came back with a landscape of a lighthouse situated on a rocky coast with crashing white, foamy waves, housed in a plain wooden frame. It was a simple painting and I liked it. Not just because it was a Nana original, but because it certainly was New Englandy and quaint and hung perfectly in front of the chimney in our new house (see above).
We quickly wanted to discover where, exactly, this lighthouse was. Not knowing anything about lighthouses, all we had for clues was the painting itself and a year scribbled on the back under Nana's name and address - 1961. The rocky coast screamed "Maine" and my father, who would have been 11 when she produced the piece, thought he remembered her using a photo from a calendar of Maine shots as her guide.
Placing the lighthouse was both easier and more difficult than I would have guessed. Not having real keywords - "Maine," "lighthouse," "red roof building" - my Google image search was far more productive than it should have been. The big problem came with the photo inconsistency. In Nana's painting, the lighthouse is next to a white house with a red roof, a small red shack and a weird triangular, almost teepee-like white structure. I found dozens of photos of what looked like the same lighthouse, the same red-roofed building, the same red shack and the same rocky coast, but the teepee was nowhere to be found. Finally, I started reading the found this:
The station originally had a fog bell operated by automatic striking machinery. The skeleton frame bell tower was replaced in 1911 by a white pyramidal tower, itself torn down in 1961.
So there it was. A pyramidal tower that was torn down at almost the precise time Nana painted her picture. Her lighthouse was the Nubble Lighthouse on Cape Neddick in York, Maine. (This is about the time in the story where anyone who knows anything about lighthouses or Maine says something like, "How in the world did you not recognize one of the most photographed lighthouses in New England?" To which I say, "Shut up.")
The discovery of the lighthouse was enhanced even more when we realized we were actually scheduled to go to York later that summer, for the wedding of a friend. Another pair of friends live in Kennebunk, Maine, not terribly far from York, and we came up a day early, stayed with them and had them take us to the lighthouse, allowing us to take a photo that puts us right in Nana's painting.
Since then, I've felt a new connection to lighthouses in general, and Maine lighthouses in particular. We've made a visit to our Kennebunk friends an annual tradition and they always take us to a new location. Last year, it was Marshall Point, famous for this scene in Forrest Gump. We had fun re-enacting his cross-cross-cross-country run.
This year, it was Portland Head Light, the oldest lighthouse in the state, located in Cape Elizabeth. It was another beauty.
No lighthouse will have the same connection for me as Nubble, and I'm looking forward to bringing my son there in future years. But I'm also enjoying checking off these New England institutions one beautiful day at a time.
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