My first year in Maine was so amazing that even though it was 25 years ago, I remember each season vividly. But I remember summer and Christmas the most.

Christmas in 1980 was cold, minus 28 degrees with a wind chill of minus 65 degrees. I didn’t realize at the time that we were setting a record.

My mother was visiting from southern California, where they were also setting a record – for heat. She later sent me an article from the newspaper on Christmas Day in Los Angeles, showing people frolicking in the ocean to escape the 85-degree temperature.

It’s hard to pack for cold weather when you are in the heat. She brought the most ridiculous clothes, like a dress of black lace; but it had long sleeves so she thought it would be appropriate. We had to go out and purchase clothes for her.

My son and I were living in an apartment in the country beside our summer campground along Highway 201 in Gardiner. Because we had grown close to many people who lived there, they had fashioned the semblance of a home for us, rustic but inadequate for winter. It was only days before Mother arrived that we got a functioning bathroom. We had been using an outhouse and going over to friends’ houses to take showers. It was an adventure that my son and I were up for, but my mother hardly would have been.

The car I had driven to Maine in was old before I even started, and the heater had stopped working long before. I had come from the Sun Belt, so I didn’t really think I had to have a heater. I thought it a luxury, not a necessity.

Christmas afternoon we had reservations for dinner at the Holiday Inn. It was about 20 miles from home.

Just about nobody’s car would start. One of my neighbors had a relative with a car that actually started, so we hooked up our booster cables to one another’s cars to get them all going. Once they started, we left them running, not daring to turn them off.

Incidentally, later that week I learned the trick of hooking up an orange mechanic’s work lamp with a 100-watt light bulb in the cage, turning it on, lifting the hood of my car and setting this on the engine block, letting the hood down slowly, and leaving it for the night. I would put some 6-mil plastic over the hood to trap in the heat. The car sat in my front driveway on Highway 201.

People would tell me that they were driving down my road at night and thought they saw a space ship, only to get closer and find it was my car, put to bed. But I didn’t have any more trouble starting it that cold winter, and people were getting boosts off my old engine.

So, that Christmas of 1980 found my mother, my son and me driving to the Holiday Inn in my old Maverick with no heat. We were bundled up; but, nonetheless, we were very uncomfortable. We did arrive, left the car running and were getting out of the car when we realized our legs were totally numb. We could not feel ourselves walking. We did walk, but we were afraid we would take some major misstep since our usual sensory data were missing. And Mother and I were in heels.

Once inside, my mother announced she was not leaving. She was going to stay there, and we could come see her if we wanted.

By the end of a good, long dinner with wine, she relented and returned home with us. I think she had forgotten how cold it was.

Later in her visit, Mother said, “When I got off the plane in Augusta, I was so cold, but little did I realize it was the most comfortable I would be my whole stay.” Once home, she sent me a lot of pictures of Antarctica and asked me if I didn’t want to move there.

Mother could make a good story out of anything; each telling would get better. I would love to have heard the stories she told her friends about our first Christmas in Maine.

Dianne Russell Kidder is a writer, consultant and social worker based in Lisbon. She may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].