Mother’s Day Weekend on Mount Desert Island

Carrie Jones

May 11, 2025

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.

MOUNT DESERT ISLAND—On the damp fields of Peggy Rockefeller Farm Saturday morning, people gathered to watch a rite of Mount Desert Island spring: the releasing of the lambs.

The day was wet. There were muddy bits everywhere and some beautiful puddles that young humans took great advantage of.

And then everyone lined up along an electric fence to watch the lambs and some sheep guardians emerge from the barn.

It took a bit. Some didn’t seem to want to venture out into the wet weather as the humans exclaimed and took photos.

“They are so cute,” one child said.

“Here they come! Here they come!”

They came out. They went back in. They came back out again. They tested the grass. They tasted the air. And then they frolicked.

They were brave and those watching applauded and laughed, pointed and some grew teary eyed.

Love is like that and so is mothering and those two gifts aren’t always in the exact forms and ways you think of, but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is love. What matters is mothering.

This weekend was also Mount Desert Island High School’s proms. Photo after photo was shared of teens dressed up, parents and caretakers, teary-eyed.

As one Mother’s Day poster from Southwest Harbor said, “What luck that all of these amazing beings I get to mother are just so delightful.”

Comment after comment came on the photos that moms posted of their high school daughters and sons:

“Wow.”

“So stunning.”

“So handsome!”

“What beautiful humans.”

“Where did the time go?”

“Oh my gosh, Momma, your heart must be exploding right now.”

In its best sense, mothering is about emotional warmth. It’s about taking care of someone and providing security and safety. It’s about love, nurturing, and hope. That comes in so many ways.

It might come from organizing the little details of everyone’s days, of managing doctors appointments and visits and food and playdates. It might just come from understanding someone else’s needs and supporting those needs in a way you might never imagine.

It might be about rebuilding communities, structures, organizations, and people all the way back up when they have burned to the ground—literally or figuratively.

On Friday night, the Blue Nose Inn hosted a grand opening and ribbon cutting of its new hotel building. It replaced the one that had burned down in February, 2022.

Multiple generations of the Lafayette family stood by the red ribbon to celebrate together. Danny Lafayette, who started the 30-hotel-strong company in 1982 with his wife Carla, let their children who now run the business, take center stage while he held one end of the ribbon.

Sometimes mothering is about not needing a spotlight, but letting others have that moment . . . that joy.

Members of the community came out, too, to celebrate the hotel building’s rebuild, the continuation despite destruction.

Also on Friday night Cameron DePaola’s new Mount Desert business headed over to Bar Harbor for an event where people created beautiful arrangements of flowers in a festive, fun atmosphere. It’s likely the first of many pop-up events for Bloom this summer.

Cool as a Moose hosted Bloom Botanical Boutique for this pop-up that involved laughter and beauty as people made bouquets for their moms or themself or someone else they loved.

It was about experience and love and giving with a whole lot of beauty thrown in.

Sunday morning was an opportunity for many families to head to brunch or maybe make it at home, to sleep in or to take to the woods or go to the farmer’s market, which opened for the season. Other families, still full of mothering, had members that had to work, that were out there cleaning rooms, selling goods at the farmer’s market, keeping the community safe on fire, police, dispatch, hospital, and ambulance crews. Others were making those brunches for other mothers.

Sunday afternoon there was a packed lawn as people gathered to listen to American Idol sensation Julia Gagnon on the lawn at the Ivy Manor Inn.

Other families strolled on the streets of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, and Southwest Harbor. They spent time at Sand Beach and Hunter’s Beach and Little Long Pond or just at home.

The work that keeps a community together is often similar to the work that keeps a family together: it’s unseen. It is often thankless. But it is there. It is always there.

It’s the people who take care of us.

It’s the people who cultivate new experiences with us like Bloom’s pop-up at Cool as a Moose or the Ivy Manor Inn bringing Julia Gagnon to town.

It’s the people who nurture, who rebuild, who celebrate each other’s beauty and growth as represented in prom photos and the joyous reactions to them.

It’s in a family celebrating a piece of their business building back up again from the ashes.

It’s in the humans and sheep tending to those lambs as they step out in the paths, making sure they are on safe footing as they venture into the big world.

Mothering is everywhere on this island. And it’s the key—the quiet and often understated key—of why there is still beauty here and how that beauty blossoms and frolics and grows in one interaction after another.

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Photos unless otherwise specified: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story who is working on Mother’s Day, yes. Yes, yes, she is.

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