Jenny DeWeir grew up in Northport, Long Island, yet summered here, making friends for life. She claims not many people know her, but if you mention someone, she knows that person, and not superficially. Waldoboro is woven into her fiber. Back when Fessenden’s was Fessenden’s, she and her friend Amy Pierson owned the florist shop together. It used to sit between that store and the pharmacy. Then Jenny’s marriage fell apart, and she changed course. She enlisted in nursing school full-time and took on three jobs to support herself: she was an evening Personal Assisted Liaison at Windward Gardens in Camden; a floral designer at Hawkes Farm & Greenhouse in Wiscasset; and a weekend waitress at the Nobleboro Dinner House. She was so busy that sometimes she didn’t where she was. Her rigorous calendar helped. Since 1997, she has worked at Pen Bay Medical Center in almost every department (except ER, OB, and psychiatric). For the past 17 years, she’s been in the Anticoagulation Care Unit where she now manages the clinic with a staff of twelve nurses who see a roster of regular patients for their clotting issues. For solace, though, she spends her hours gardening, with horses and in her home that overlooks the river.
My father loved Down East Magazine. When I was little, we used to come up to Maine and stay at different inns. One day, he found an ad in the magazine for a property in Waldoboro. It was the middle of winter. But he and my mother with us four girls all piled in the car to drive up and look at it. My father ended up buying it. It was an old Cape near the end of Dutch Neck. I think I was eight years old. It became our summer home. It had an orchard behind it, and we swam in the cove, and there were lots of kids to play with. We didn’t have a TV. We played games. We read a lot of books.
I had a neighbor, Osborn Finch, and he became a very good friend to me. My mom would say, “Don’t bother the Finches,” but I couldn’t wait. As soon as we arrived from our eight-hour trip from Long Island, I’d go over there. I think he was especially important to me because I had recently lost my grandfather. Anyway, he would take me into the house, and we would read. He baked cookies for me. His mother was there, too. She always wore a housedress.
He had a nursery right across the road from his house. He was a nurseryman. He took me through the woods and taught me about plants like the winterberry and princess pine that grows on the forest floor, and he’d show me lady slippers and Indian peace pipe. He’d show me birds through the binoculars and all kinds of nature things that to this day I remember. It’s now a preserve, and I still walk there. To me, Waldoboro reminds me of him.
I had fallen in love with horses. I was the only one in my family like that. At home and in Waldoboro summer, I would ride. We began to lease a horse for the me in the summer, and we’d keep it at home here, too. One summer, we had a horse that used to get loose, and sometimes it would run through Osborn Finch’s nursery. But he never got mad. He and his mother were really nice people.
Then, one day when we were back on Long Island, I had what my mother said would be both the happiest day and the saddest day of my life. It was the happiest because that day I got a horse, the first one I ever owned. And it was saddest day because that night, we received a call telling us that Osborn Finch and his mother had both died. It was so tragic. I think of Osborn Finch a lot.
My last horse, Hawk, died this past summer. I had never felt such grief. I still feel it. The counselor at Pope Memorial Humane Society said, “The grief you feel right now will be replaced by the great love you had for Hawk.”
Hawk understood everything. No matter how many tragedies or losses or deaths I had, I could just go to him, I swear, and that horse understood. I had him for 21 years. I don’t think I can get another horse. I think I am too old, and I don’t know if it would be fair to die before the horse. But even though I don’t have a horse, I go to the barn.
I have a very demanding on the brain kind of job. It’s the kind of work that takes a lot of thought. You carry a lot of responsibility.
On a hospital floor of nursing, you might see a person for a short period of time and then that person goes home. But here at the clinic, people might be coming in for their entire life because they need to be on a blood agent. I might see them every month or more often, over years and years. Our patients become our family. They are why I love what I do, they and the people I work with.
Seeing their hardships is difficult, though. Like the people who struggle getting to and from the clinic, because they don’t have a vehicle. Or the people who can’t afford medications, but they need them. What can we do to make that work for them? And then, there are days when we lose people we have seen for years. It’s very hard.
I take care of myself by being in the stable with the ponies. Listening to them. Seeing them eat. I love animals. I have a profound love of horses. Horses are in my soul. I became a nurse because I wanted to be caring for things. I can be wound up or distressed or sad, and being around the ponies and horses, it just lowers my blood pressure. They are so kind and loving.
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