I think when my cousin Kate returned from spending her junior year of high school in Brazil, part of that country came with her. I've never experienced a more humid, damp, saturated visit to Maine before. I've never expected there to be a need for an air conditioner in a house that was always cool and dry in the August heat, and where stargazing out on the deck at night in late summer often required a sweatshirt. Instead, Jess and I were a bit relieved when Aunt Barb gave in and purchased an air conditioner, to be placed in a window in our downstairs guestroom, to not so much cool off the lower floor as dehumidify it. If my summers in Maine are any indication, global warming is happening. The president should know that � his father spends summers there (and he used to get drunk there).

Still, despite the rain I got in most of what I'd hoped to do in two and a half days up there.

Upon arriving a little after 1 p.m. Saturday, I toyed with a nap, having woke up at 5 a.m. to leave at 6. I went back and forth between a nap and swimming and decided on the swim. All of us � Jess, Uncle Johnny, Barb, Kate and Christine � walked down the path through the woods to the river � the Sheepscot River on the maps, but simply The River to us � for 45 minutes. After painfully walking across the sharper, smaller rocks near the shore, I made my way out to one of two that protrudes from the water not far from the bank and dove into the middle of the stream. I then swam and crawled back toward shore, where I put on Johnny's flippers and a pair of goggles and spent the rest of the time exploring the sepia-toned depths and the rocks beneath the surface. Barb and I explored one deeper section as we all discussed putting a rope swing somewhere on the bank from which to swing and jump into the water. I swam one long section between submerged boulders completely underwater, going from where Johnny sat with his head above water to the group of three where the girls rested. I felt like an explorer, scanning the shallow depths for whatever may lay down there.

Sunday provided a rewarding discovery, though not beneath the water. After lunch at a microbrewery in Freeport, we parked among all the out-of-state cars in the outlet district and sauntered into the L.L. Bean Factory Store where returned, overstocked and discontinued merchandise are offered at deep discounts from what they'd go for at the flagship store across the street. It's usually an exercise in browsing, where what you might need is probably in limited (and undesirable) supply, but another irresistible bargain may present itself. It didn't take me long to find that I wouldn't be buying my raincoat at the Factory Store, but while contemplating a camp futon in a bag, Jess came over.

"Did you see � 30 percent off all luggage," she said.

I looked over at the various duffel bags scattered around and a single rolling suitcase (or at least similar) standing upright. The tag said $179, but at 30 percent off, that's about $120.

Now, the thing about many of the returned backpacks and suitcases at the L.L. Bean Factory Store is that they may have the initials or even the name of some random stranger unhappy with his or her purchase or gift. Backpacks for EMF, JRS, Casey, Jeanne can be had for $10 and although I have no need for a new backpack at the moment, one caught my eye at that price. But I talked myself out of such a frivolous purchase. A suitcase, however, would be a worthwhile investment for me. First, I don't have one. I currently use a somewhat large duffel bag for weekends that require a lot or trips of four or five days. Anything longer, and I've requested a suitcase from my parents, thinking that one of these days I'll have to get my own. So I look at this nice green rolling Pullman at the L.L. Bean Factory Store and then Jess says, "Did you see the initials?"

I move it away from the duffel bags piled in front of it to see the letters stitched onto the front: DAC. My initials.

I consider this such a fabulous and fortuitous bargain purchase and need rolled into one that I want to call my parents and Casey from the store, but I manage to be satisfied with showing my cousins and their parents. While I essentially bought a secondhand returned suitcase with some random person's initials on it, I also got a basically new suitcase with my own monogram on it at less than half the price. There were plenty of pockets (I love pockets in travel bags) as well as a garment bag and a board to help with folding nice shirts neatly inside as well. Now November � the first time I'll likely need it � can't come fast enough.

While browsing, the sunny skies had clouded over and released a deluge on the parking lot. Soaked shoppers sprinted from their cars into the store and received paper towels to dry off from an employee. Jess and Barb purchased $4 ponchos and Johnny ran to the car to stash my suitcase and return with an umbrella. We then hopped in for the drive across the street to the flagship store and spent an hour shopping there while the rain passed.

Ironically, after I bought my raincoat, I didn't need to remove it from the bag.

Monday, while the rest of them worked, Jess, Chris and I drove two-and-a-half hours to Acadia National Park and cruised the loop road around to Jordan Pond, where we hiked around the pond and up the half-mile, 60-degree angled trail to the peak of South Bubble. The entire trip around the pond, up the 500 feet of rock with a rest at the top, back down, and around the rest of the pond took exactly two hours. The rain stayed away and we endured the hot sun and humidity along the pond's shores while feeling the relief of stiff breezes earlier when down at the Atlantic shoreline and later at the top of South Bubble. (It's not my picture, but Jordan Pond is the water in the foreground, the Atlantic in back. If you follow the pond's shoreline from the left edge of the photo across to the right, that little clearing in the trees is where we parked the car and started the hike. We went to the left in the photo, around that shore, up South Bubble, back down, then around the pond to the right side in the photo.)

In Maine more than anywhere else, I find it easy to cut myself off from just about everything I'm used to back home. I don't care about TV shows (partly because I'm always up there in the summer, but still), sports scores, what's happening in the news. A few years ago, we watched when part of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal broke, but that's the only time I can remember us paying particular attention to the news. When the Maine Sunday Telegram is sitting on the kitchen table, I'll flip through the sports section and read what baseball news is there, but I'm not dying for a Boston Globe. During the idle hours between outings or meals, I'm not looking for a remote control, a computer, or even a radio. I'm happy with a book, a magazine, a local newspaper. I'll relax in the hammock or take a quick nap in the warm sunshine, or put on my hiking shoes and meander down the path to the river, turn north along the bank and follow the old grade of the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railroad on which you can still feel the indentations left by the wooden ties when they were pulled up. Johnny once told me that about a mile downriver, just off the western bank (the same side his house is on), back in the trees you can still find an old water tower from the railroad standing. I was then and remain intensely intrigued. Unfortunately, the river is only passable by canoe in the springtime when the snowmelt swells the waterway to two feet its regular volume and higher.

I never get tired of the same old things we used to do in Maine: trips to Pemaquid, visits to Camden and hikes up Mt. Battie with its amazing view of the town below, dinner at Sarah's in Wiscasset (even with its notoriously slow service), an evening at the Union County Fair if our visit coincides with the exhibition dates.

When Johnny first moved to Maine to go to college at the state university in Orono, my mom says the entire family knew he'd never come back permantently. They were right. After college, he lived in various homes, often as a winter caretaker in someone's summer home. Eventually, he moved into the house my grandparents bought to eventually be their summer home, but that never happened after my grandfather died. Mom recently came across the three-ring binder in which my grandfather kept the records for the house, and Johnny was amazed to find that he once paid his father $125 a month in rent. Back then the house was four rooms above a two-door garage: two bedrooms, a bathroom, and an L-shaped living room/dining area/kitchen. A sliding door off the living room area opened to thin air for a few years until Johnny had a deck built. Also on the property, just off the driveway in front of the house, was a one-room (with bathroom) cabin that Johnny rented out when he took up permanent residence in the house. After he and Barb married and then had Kate in 1985, they eventually moved the cabin around to the back of the house (where it is now stocked full to the roof with stuff and overgrown outside by the trees), built a new three-door garage where the cabin once stood, and finished off the garage area to what is now the downstairs living area. Upstairs, they added another bedroom and a study with a pull-out couch. It's quite a transformation over the past 20+ years.

I have a very vague memory of a trip taken to the house with my grandfather, my dad and Johnny, I believe. I have no idea of this really happened (like if there were others there) or what the circumstances are. In my memory, it was a quick afternoon trip the four of us took while some other family members remained at Grandma and Grandpa's house. But that's impossible because Grandma and Grandpa's house is 9 hours away in North Caldwell, New Jersey, while my uncle's house is up in Whitefield, Maine. I should investigate this memory.

I guess what it comes down to is that now, with my grandmother 20 years ago having sold the house my mom and Johnny grew up in, this Maine house and our house hold the history of our family.

Another part of that history was revived on Sunday as we sat at Sarah's in Wiscasset waiting for our food. I idly placed the tips of my two index fingers on the edge of the table and, without thinking, bounced them individually in front of me, up to my chin. I thought nothing of it, as if I was playing "Heart and Soul" on the piano. Christine, sitting across from me, gasped.

"Oh, you remember that?!" she said. I wasn't sure what she meant. "What Grandma used to do, with the two birds."

Kate and Jess quickly caught on, and then Barb looked across me to Johnny, sitting on my left, and urged him to do it. That's when I remembered. He tore two pieces off his paper napkin and secured them to the fingernails on his index fingers with saliva. With his fingertips then resting on the edge of the table, he recited the rhyme and acted out the hand movements that take the pieces of paper away when he flings each finger behind his head, then brings them back again:

Two little blackbirds, sitting on a hill
One named Jack, one named Jill
Fly away, Jack
Fly away, Jill
Come back, Jack
Come back, Jill

For a second, I'd forgotten the trick and was duped all over again to the point that I laughed harder than I have in a while, as did the rest of the family.