I’m not talking about being in the wrong economic class to have a summer home in Maine. I couldn’t make myself sign the papers to sell my house during the real estate boom, then I imagined never selling because of the capital gains tax (geez, like a 1 percenter).

What’s strange is that whoosh of time passing even though nothing looks very different when I return to Southwest Harbor every July. Has it become common for regular 99 percenters to live in two places?

I’ve already missed the lilacs bursting into purple in my Southwest Harbor backyard. Some springs are cold and rainy. The lupines arrive late and I get to see fields covered with  the great-grandparents of the much smaller Texas bluebonnets that bloom in Tucson.

I still have many friends there. After about five minutes of getting together it feels like I’ve never left. I’ve missed the ocean more this year, not that I want to hear the howling winter wind. Nope.

A month or two before returning to Southwest Harbor, I feel both physically and psychologically closer to the island I lived on for 24 years — through ice and snow, children being born and going off to college, teaching and divorce, opening and closing Oz Books, going from gray hair to dark brown (and returning again), and from one season of lilacs to the next.