The Cycle of Nostalgia
Welcome to the first installment of a new series in which Grace rambles about whatever is on her mind. In this edition, she tackles her complicated emotions with the concept of nostalgia and its effect on her life outlook and even her writing.
A big thanks and shout out to Gavin Johnson, who took the aesthetic cover picture!
The fact that I am old enough now to have nostalgia gives me a complicated series of emotions.
On the one hand, I am glad to have all these memories and places that are so special to me. I love that the smell of cookies can take me right back to sitting on the kitchen counter in my parent's house, eight years old again, just waiting for my dad to take that pan of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. But then, I remember that those times have passed. Never again will I be eight in that house. My dad won’t be excitedly counting the minutes with me as we watch the dough rise.
Nostalgia sometimes feels like a warm summer breeze. My little sister and I are climbing the dogwood tree in our front yard, the cow patties across the field bake in the sun as the smell of rain evaporates off the asphalt. I can’t remember the last time I climbed a tree.
Walking the halls of my elementary school as a teacher puts a weight on my chest and a pressure in my throat. That used to be my mom’s classroom. That’s where someone ignited my love for words. That’s where I learned how to stand up for myself. I watch ghostly imitations of myself and my schoolmates running on the same playground, breaking the same rules, and getting scolded by the same people, except the playground is more worn, the rules a little stricter, and the teachers are a little more gray. I attend the same church I have since my parents got married in it. But now I bring my own man. He is building memories in this place so steeped in familiarity for me. It’s strange to have to show him around.
What do you mean you don’t know Ms. Anna, who taught my Sunday school class when I was eleven and still sits behind the pastor today? How do you not know all the places I played hide and seek during those youth events? You don’t know how Dr. Johnson’s classroom echoed with songs and laughter after AWANA every Sunday night or how I watched a friend fall through the ceiling tiles after a teenage dare gone wrong. He was fine, but we giggled as he vacuumed the rubble from the carpet for hours. Can you not feel the history here? The air smells the same as it did a decade ago. It is staunched with memories that are so blindingly potent that sometimes I forget Ms. Heather doesn’t teach pre-K anymore and that the youth room isn’t neon green.
It is so easy for me to get lost in the wild woods of nostalgia. To get caught up in the fact that it’s over. Try as I might, I’ll never have another childhood, elementary best friend, or first college roommate. Time will do what God designed it to do: move on. But isn’t that the point? To evolve into a new creature, like a snake shedding old skin, is what we were made for. We are an always learning species that lives and breathes to change. Maybe nostalgia is a gift, not a curse, as I had thought. After all, God gave me the breath to rise this morning, so there still must be more to learn.
So I make new memories at all of those places, and maybe someday I’ll look back and see those as nostalgic too. I’ll miss the homework over coffee when we were all just excited to have our licenses, or the bible studies at my house when we ate a dozen donuts by ourselves, or the time we watched The Knowing thirteen times. It wasn’t even that great of a movie. Will this tightness in my chest one day turn to that sweet, honey-colored hue they show in movies? They were good memories, great times, and wonderful people to have a childhood with. But now it’s time to try new places for dinner, see new people for Bible studies, and change my order at the coffee shop. Someday, those might change into this feeling, too. But for a little while, I’ll savor the taste of a chai my high school counselor ordered for me first, cherish the Dead Poets Society because an English teacher talked about it with such love, and sit in the same pew at church because my parents picked it years ago. I’ll live with this nostalgia, both loving it and hating it. Wanting more of it and wishing I’d never tasted it. Hoping for more and wishing it’ll never go away.
Maybe as a writer, it’s my job to pour that into my words. Could I ever get someone to read a sentence of my construction and feel that same weightiness? Someday, will someone long to read my book for the first time again, the same way I wish for so many of my childhood reads? Could this be what nostalgia is meant for? It is the pouring out of fondness into people you are fond of. It’s the “here, try the first cookie off of dad’s fresh pan” to a younger sibling because you know it’ll be amazing. It’s giving a boost to a friend so they can climb to the best spot in the tree. It’s a million shared moments where you are the insider, letting a little trade secret shine through. Your favorite movie will soon become theirs; your old songs will play on their radios. It is a forgotten love, reemerging as a broken, new creature, ready to be embraced again.
What have you yet to share with someone? What new bond can you make over one little experience? What thing shines like a secret in your heart, waiting for you to pass along the love?
Check out the cover picture here! Photo by Gavin Johnson.
