Marion's Stories

I traveled many miles to my hearsay home,
The Island of childhood stories, "til then unseen.
Exploring pathways oft' trod by those who went before
Led me upward to their final resting place.

I wandered slowly from stone to stone,
Reading each inscription, searching for the one
that would say to me, "Welcome! Welcome home.
Come, sit a spell, and let's just BE--you, and me."

I saw strange name, names that rang no bells;
But more than those were the family names
That sang to me of stories that my mother told
Of friends, of neighbors, of echoes of the past.

And then, there it was--a simple stone,
One of a row of four,
Surrounded by a low wall that said,
"This is one family--yours."

Carved into the stone were these words,
"Melissa E., wife of Charles C. Cousins. 1920."
No more. A skeleton of words.
Covering her skeleton of bones.

Like a twig plucked from a bush and
Stripped of all its leaves,
Those words stood naked as bones,
Stripped of all their life-giving flesh.

I sat on the wall by my grandmother's feet
And Softly said, "Melissa E., speak to me,
Tell me of your life that I may better know mine.
When were you born? Who were your parents?

"Tell me what life was like for a young girl,
Growing up on this Island of rocks and hills,
Early married, soon a widowed mother of four.
Your stone tells none of that chapter.

"A twice-widowed mother of five,
Whose husband was lost while aiding other in distress.
You were left to care for his lighthouse
And your children. Alone.

Add some flesh to the bare bones.
Bring them back to loving life with
Memories passed from generation to generation.
Write them down that they do not die.

"Melissa E., tell me. Tell, me.
Let me know the comfort of loving arms,
Of family, of friends,
Of all that my hungering heart craves."

And then, from out of the ground
Came the voice of the ages
As my grandmother's spirit spoke
To me in softness and in love:

"Quiet, my Child. Fill your heart
With the sound of the surf crashing upon the rocks;
With the smell of the sea air that your mother loved;
With the cry of the gulls circling endlessly overhead.

"This is your island--your family
Walked its paths, knew its secrets,
Bore its hardships, worshipped its Maker,
Since before the beginning of our country.

"You are a part of this Island, as it is a part of you.
Those on it now are your family, your friends.
Get to know them, and you will know yourself.
Now, Child, please hand me my shawl.

"My bones are cold and weary,
And I would resume my sleep.
Contented, I rose, then added, "You will not be forgotten.
Rest in peace, Melissa E."

--Marion Dixon, 8/12/1978

I never knew my grandfather, Charles Cousins Cousins. He was born in 1843, and died many years before I was born...

What kind of an education did Charles and his brothers get in their life at sea? A practical one, surely, learning their trade by doing and by being exposed to all they needed to carry on the family business. But did he learn to read and write and figure? In the letter he received from his cousin Otis shortly before he died, it was suggested that he have his daughter write down any stories his father might have told him. Did he not know how to write, or was he physically incapacitated by that time?

As children, my sisters and I heard stories about our grandmother, but the story that I remember Mother telling about her father was more notable for what it didn't say than for what it did say.

Charles was not a night person. 9 PM was bedtime, and the entire family must all go to bed when Charles went. Some winter nights when snow covered the roads of town, and Mother's friends were sledding within earshot of the house, her mother came to her rescue. As soon as Charles was sound asleep, Melissa would help Ethel out of the window to join her friends. She returned the same way.

This story smacks of clashes of wills, and of division within the household. Of Him vs. Them.

When Charles was a young man of 26, he stayed ashore long enough to marry Lizzie Ann Stinson, whose forebears were among the earliest settlers of Deer Isle, in Penobscot Bay. In 1870, their son, Willie, was born, followed by Percy two years later. When Willie was six and Percy was four, their mother died. Charles needed someone to mother his sons.

At about the same time, Melissa (Colby) Davis Holden, the 32-year-old, twice-widowed, keeper of the Mark Island light, mother of five, was faced with loss of her job. Had a man applied for the position? She now needed a third husband to provide them with the necessities of life.

A mutual friend brought them together, and a marriage of convenience for both was arranged.

To this ready-made family of his and hers they added four of theirs--Jennie Dess (named for a schooner), Lyman, Robert, and Ethel, my mother.

Was it a tiring of life at sea or the attraction of his new wife, or was Melissa'a personality even stronger than her new husband's? Life at sea seems to have changed to a mariner's life closer to home. People and products were moved across the bay in the Village Maid and the Tar Box. On the island Charles also hauled goods via horse-drawn wagons. Mother was taught a never-ending fear of horses to keep her out from under foot and hoof.

Many years later, when we named our last baby Melissa after her great-grandmother, I told my mother that we planned to call her M'liss. "Oh, please don't," she begged me. "That was what my father roared at my mother whenever he was angry." She had been gone from home for 48 years, but still the name M'liss made her wince. What kind of man would yell at his wife and scare his daughter so lastingly?

Was my grandfather a belligerent, angry man? Was he a semi-domesticated man of the high seas, lost and unhappy on dry land? Or had he finally met his match in the equally strong personalitiy of his second wife? Regardless of the storminess of the marriage, it lasted for 32 years, ended by the death of Charles Cousins Cousins, in 1908, at the age of 64.

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