This Week in Lincolnville: An Envelope Full of Memory

Sun, 12/28/2025 - 5:48pm

Ed O’Brien

Christmas morning 2025 brought the three boys who grew up here at Sleepy Hollow together on Christmas for the first time in who knows how long.

Lincolnville children have left home for as long as our town existed. It is, and was, a small and quiet place.

Lincolnville, and Maine itself, has, for most of the history of its European settlers, been a place people are from, not necessarily where they live. Many young men left to fight in the Civil War, and when they returned, like so many who have seen the horrors of battle, found that home was different, or they were different, and they set off west.

The subsistence farming life presented little future. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many left to seek fortune in the industries of southern New England. There is a notable pipeline between Maine and Connecticut, and no doubt many Connecticut families with old Maine roots.

As we turned 18, all three of us boys raised up the hill from Lincolnville Beach left our town, bound for colleges out of state. Generous scholarships and plenty of student loans paid our way into private colleges in Massachusetts and New Jersey. One brother made his way to Europe immediately after graduation, to teach in Switzerland. I went from college graduation to bartending in Boston, but a couple years later followed my older brother to where he was now teaching high school math in Taiwan. Here I would teach English, and try to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life.

Our youngest brother also made his way to Taiwan after his college graduation, but he stayed far longer than I did.

I was the first to return to Maine, at the age of 25, right to the back bedroom in the porch ell. At least for a few months, before securing a job I learned to love and a little place in the South End of Rockland.

We returned home. Several years after I returned, my younger brother came home from overseas, and made his own splash in the Midcoast. He went on to become a state legislator, a journalist, a union representative, and general rabble rouser. We are all vey proud.

My older brother made a home in Lincolnville for several years, before heading out again, teaching once again in Switzerland, then Fiji, and finally a bit closer in New Hampshire. He recently moved back to Lincolnville.

All the while we grew older. We married, we had kids. Our father passed in January 2017. Our mother grieved, and found love again, in a wonderful man who was also grieving the love of his own life.

Christmas 2025. It was cold and snowy, as we always imagine Christmas mornings in our mind. Ma and Don, in their chairs by the fire, bacon and popovers, the three boys who grew up here with their additions, daughters-in-laws and grandchildren. Ma gave each of us boys a thick envelope.

She had been sorting through old photos, the ones that did not fit into the family albums. She handed me memories. Little notes I had left her, a Mother’s Day card I made her, pictures of the last 50 years. The toddler eating green apples, the little boy by the woodshed, the adolescent awkwardly posing, the new husband, the grinning father.

As the New Year dawns, I, the first baby at the Knox County General Hospital 1975, will turn old. And that is okay.

I have watched my nieces grow up and leave home like their mother and father and uncles did, My own children are preparing their next steps into a world beyond this little town. And that is also okay.

Lincolnville, it has been quite a year. Generally quiet here, but this is to be expected. Thanks to technology, we can see the world beyond, and I believe we can do better. Be kind, be welcoming. Do not give in to bullying, to negativity. Reach out at ceobrien246@gmail.com.

Municipal Calendar

Tuesday, December 30

Library open 3-6 p.m. 208 Main Street

AA Meeting 12:15 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Wednesday, December 31

Planning Board, 6 p.m. Town Office

Thursday, January 1

New Years Day, Town Office closed

Friday, January 2

AA Meeting 12:15 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Library open 9-12, 208 Main Street

Saturday, January 3