Sun, 12/29/2024 - 5:53pm

Ed O’Brien

View from Pond Bridge. “If you don’t know where Pond Bridge is, you didn’t grow up in the right place.” (Photo by Mike Eugley)

I always take the last week of the year off, between Christmas and New Year's. The time between the wrapping paper being cleaned up and my birthday on the first is always a bit strange — what day is it? I am not sure how well I do without structure, with little to do beyond providing rides to basketball practice and the Snow Bowl, and figuring out what to make for dinner. But is does give me time to reflect.

There has been a bit more reflection than usual this year. I turn 50 Wednesday. An impossibly old age. I feel it. I don’t feel it at all.

I am sure to those of you who read my column, and have a few years on me, 50 seems young. And it is. Think back to when you were a kid imagining 50 years, though. It seemed like such a long time. It hasn’t been.

My mind rummages through 50 years of memories, well probably more like 47. Watching President Carter on the news on the brand new color TV. Suffering through Hee-Haw with my father, watching the Muppet Show with my family on Sunday nights, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and The Electric Company with my brothers on weekday afternoons. Sure, screens were not as present as they are for my own kids, but we had plenty of screen time.

Afternoons building roads and tunnels in the sand pile, setting up formations of green plastic army men. Building boats and sailing them down Frohock Brook.... I wonder if any ever made it to the Bay? Snow forts and snowball fights in the back yard, so much sledding.

I remember the tail end of the Cold War, and the fear of nuclear annihilation. Maine’s own Samantha Smith, not much older than I, and her unofficial ambassadorship to the Soviet Union, bringing hope to the young people of both nations, and her tragic death.

I had a pen pal in the late 80s, a young woman living in what is now Slovakia, with whom I maintained a correspondence for years, through the break up of the Soviet Republic and the formation of her own nation separate from the Czech Republic. We were not very different, just two kids trying to grow up as the Iron Curtain crumbled. Marta is also approaching 50. I hope she is happy, where ever she is.

I see my teenage self in my own kids, each of them alternating between familiar and completely baffling, and seeing so much of my wife and my personalities in them. Navigating school, and extracurriculars, and friendships and crushes. Growing up.

I think about leaving home, and finding myself far away from this little place on the Coast of Maine, where nobody knew Eddie O’Brien. Triumphs and bad decisions, some years of drifting, and all the time learning. Some lessons came easier than others.

Clearly, I have always been fascinated with people. I finally landed on sociology as my major in college, with my rationale being, I like the individual, but it is in groups that people engage in the worst behavior. Sociology seems to be the study of the group psychology. More or less.

And so I reflect on all the people I knew. The couple of years that I spent bartending in Boston particularly stands out. When I think of that time, I mostly remember one particular gig in a small neighborhood restaurant which closed at the end of that summer, and the cast of characters who frequented my bar.

The Portuguese head chef, who used to talk to me of his dreams of owning his own business. For him the restaurant’s closure was a blessing. The Vietnam veteran who would often come in with a young woman who was not his wife, and would sometimes speak to me, unbidden, of his time serving in combat in a far away country, after a couple Ketel One’s on the rocks. The quiet Irish gentleman, who owned the packed Irish bar around the corner, and who would come in for a beer and a cigarette, and some talk with my other regulars. The owner of the Korean grocery store, who would always stop by to chat after closing up shop.

I didn’t yet know it, but my future career was forming then, and the time would come where I would be having similar conversations, without the complication of slinging booze.

I remember a bar manager telling me, as another restaurant closed from under us, in that cutthroat environment of the Boston bar scene, to get out while I can, otherwise I could get stuck in the business forever.

For me, it was taking my brother and his fiancé up on their offer to stay with them in Taipei, Taiwan, and try my hand at teaching English. This I did, and spent a year there, working with middle school students on conversational English in evening “cram school”, with my mornings spent at a bilingual kindergarten, thankfully paired with a Taiwanese teacher, who actually knew what she was doing. All those years of babysitting paid off during that period.

It would have been easy to stay there, but Maine kept calling.

Those of us who grew up here can have complicated feelings about this place. It is small, it is provincial, it is isolating. Making a living here is incredibly difficult. The cost of living is very high, and the prospect for good paying, local jobs is low. And housing? Bad getting worse.

But I have rarely met a born Mainer living away who does not have love for their home, even if they recognize that it may be a long time before they return.

I am not sure how new this is. Lincolnville history tells us that it has been typical since the Civil War for the children of Lincolnville to leave, only to return, maybe only for summer visits, or in old age, to the place of their birth.

To the hills and ponds and shores of this little town. Things change, while so much stays the same. We still grumble about the people from away, how the taxes are too damn high, as we have for a hundred years or more. We still gather for town meeting, or a grange supper, or a bonfire at the beach. We still come together when a tragedy befalls one of our neighbors.

So as we approach the new year and the science-fiction date of 2025, try to find gratitude in where you are in this moment. There is still a lot of hard work to do and lessons to learn.

One lesson that I have learned deeply is to be kind. Treat others with respect, don’t assume you understand them if you haven’t even tried. Be well and reach out at ceobrien246@gmail.com.

Municipal Calendar

Monday, December 30

Select Board Workshop with Fire Chief, 6 p.m., Town Office

Tuesday, December 31

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

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

Wednesday, January 1

New Years Day, Town Office Closed

Thursday, January 2

Five Town CSD Referendum Public Heating, 6 p.m., Rose Hall Board Room, Camden

Friday, January 3

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