Sale of family land brings flood of memories, and concerns about the future.

Something happened to me over last weekend. One of those crystallizing moments when, in an instant, the world refocuses, the prism shifts and you can’t hold on to assumptions you held even minutes before.

It was silent, but with enough propulsion to reach deep into the past and alter my son’s future simultaneously.

I watched it happen from a distance, like a voyeur. I was leaning on a threshold overlooking a room full of people that I’d known since childhood – most of them family in one way or another. They were watching an inspirational video describing the volunteer work being done in the local community by the company that had just purchased our family’s land. I was observing them.

It all started just days before when I learned that a significant parcel of land that had been in my extended family since 1909 had been sold to a commercial interest. The transaction was complete. My family didn’t share ownership of the land that had been sold. But the land does abut my mother’s property and the sale would certainly have an impact on its use and value. I didn’t begrudge the seller an opportunity to cash out. However, I did feel cheated that my family didn’t have a first option opportunity on at least a portion of it.

I was devastated. The sale meant that my mother’s small bit of land and the house she lived in now abutted a commercial concern. (Actually deposited on her front steps.) I was rattled and angry. Angry in a heart-pounding way. It went on for days. As the sobbing would conclude, my heart would resume pounding like a thoroughbred rounding the last length. The anger was gaining momentum with each heartbeat. I couldn’t seem to get control of it and, by the time I learned about the meeting to announce the sale to local residents, it delivered me to the room with hurricane force. By then, I was sure it was audible. I could barely hear what was going on around me, much less speak, which came out in gasps when I tried.

And then, a strange thing happened.

Just as suddenly as the rage had taken grip, it abruptly released me.

I walked away before the meeting concluded, feeling calm. I walked over the land that no longer belonged to our family – land that had once extended over 50 acres and been purchased by my immigrant grandparents through grinding labor in the woods and mills of Maine.

I remembered how it had once been covered by great open fields, with trees to climb over and a grapevine that dared children to taste the sour fruit it served up each summer.

I could almost smell the exhaust fumes from “Henry,” the big farm tractor my uncle allowed each generation of children to ride on, proudly perched behind him on the fenders.

I walked past the brook that lured and beckoned all of us children to it with its forbidden pleasures. It sent many tiny frozen feet home in deep winter and waited patiently for the sleds full of kids screaming wildly down the hill careening toward a cold dunk. In summer, it rested and bubbled quietly, with my brother and uncle perched on its banks, fishing for small chubs.

As I climbed into my car to drive home to my family, I looked up and saw the old building that had sheltered us all over the years. First my grandparents and now my mother. She was born in this house. I said a silent prayer that it would hold her until she was ready to leave it.

Jan Begert grew up in Lewiston and now lives in Bowdoinham.