Writer and Bangor Daily News columnist Sarah Smiley has lived all over the United States. Her father was an admiral in the United States Navy, and her husband is a Navy commander. But it wasn’t until she moved to Maine that she finally found “home.”
She has lived in Maine for eight years. “Almost too long to say I’m still new here,” Smiley laughed during a recent interview. And her family has no plans of leaving.
Smiley has compiled a personal love letter to Maine in a collection of her newspaper columns called “Got Here as Soon as I Could.” It includes columns from the last eight years since she moved to Maine and shows a progression in herself and her parenting style over the years.
“I tried to select ones that reflected how Maine changed myself and my parenting,” Smiley said. “Maine relaxed me a little bit.”
This is Smiley’s fourth book and first one published by Down East. The most challenging part of this one, she said, was facing her younger self.
“It’s so hard to go back and look at in black and white — your thought process from eight years ago,” Smiley said. “A lot of people if they could meet their younger self would want to argue with them.”
As she was collecting columns for the book, Smiley said she resisted the urge to edit herself and thereby change the narrative they created. That would defeat the purpose of the book.
And Smiley is first to admit Maine has changed her in many ways.
“In Florida, I was very caught up in the 6-foot privacy fence jungle,” Smiley said.
But Maine was different. It was more laid back and friendlier.
Moving to Maine, Smiley didn’t just face a different climate (her kids hadn’t seen snow before, and the family didn’t even own windbreakers), they also found an entirely different culture — one where kids ride bikes to baseball practice, play outside and mothers don’t hover.
Schools also were smaller — whereas Smiley’s oldest son, Ford, was in one of 14 kindergarten classes at his school in Florida, Owen entered kindergarten in Maine in one of two classes in his new school. And so was the whole feature of Bangor, where the Smileys moved.
“I love here how you go to The Briar Patch [bookstore] and the owner knows your name and what books your kids have read,” Smiley said.
This book, with a cover that she says she loves since it shows just how she feels about Maine, is special.
“I couldn’t believe it took me 31 years to get to Maine,” Smiley said. “[It’s] the one place I really want to belong to, [but] I will never be a Mainer.”
A book launch party and signing for “Got Here As Soon As I Could” is planned from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, at the Bangor Historical Society.