Tag Archives: Nostalgia

Ode to Autumn

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There is something magical about the change of seasons. Particularly the change from the oppressive heat of the Summer to the brisk, brightly colored, candle lit feeling of Autumn. The moment the weather turns you feel it. You walk out into the crisp morning air and you know fall has arrived. The multitude and monotony of the many shades of green suddenly transform into every imaginable color of the rainbow – from bright red and orange to yellow, green and plum purple. Temperatures that would have had us excitedly donning shorts at the start of the summer, are suddenly justification for pulling out sweaters and slacks and dreaming of winter coats. It is the start of the season that contains all of the major holidays – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. A time for friends and family and sugar cookies.

Even the labor of raking leaves feels like a labor of love the first time you do it, bringing with it a flood of childhood memories. The very smell of the air – wood burning chimney smoke, dead leaves, evergreen sap, pumpkin and zucchini bread – fills your nose with delight like a fine wine or dark chocolate fills your mouth. This is a time for remembering and a time for creating new memories.

What are some of your favorite Autumn memories?

A Date to Remember

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Recently, my husband and I stepped back in time for a few hours on a date that was both nostalgic and present-affirming. Although most of our fellow date patrons, having a median age of about 60, were probably not affirming the present so much as reliving the past. The date consisted of a matinée movie on an old and rather pixellated projector. It was shown at the local planetarium that has most likely not been updated for decades. They were serving locally brewed beer and classic candy in the lobby as they waited on us to take our seats before starting the movie. And to top it all off, the movie itself, ‘Midnight in Paris‘, was directed by none other that Woody Allen. If that doesn’t inspire nostalgia, I don’t know what will. But the irony of the whole experience was that the message of the film was about not living in the past. So many of us tend to view our own generation with the opposite of rose-colored glasses.  We eye each other with a cynicism that loudly exclaims how much worse we have it now than they did back in the day. How many of us have sighed and thought to ourselves that we were just born in the wrong era. If only we could experience the golden age of (fill in the blank). Or perhaps it’s not a time period that you covet so much as a location. If only we could live in Paris!  The air is pink there and music fills every street. Inspiration would flow freely and unabated and life would be so much better than it is here in (fill in the blank). But the truth is, as the film so beautifully illustrated, life is what we make of it. Despite how it seems sometimes, the grass is not always greener elsewhere. Generations prior to us also believed that they had it much more difficult than the generations prior to them . . . and so on and so on. If we are constantly envying people for their position or place, then we fail to see and experience the things that people will envy us for later.  This is the central theme of my blog. Learning to appreciate and really live now the things we’ll reminisce about later.  And then, when we do reminisce, it will not be a wistful longing for what might have been, but a happy remembrance of what actually was.  ‘Midnight in Paris’ was such a beautiful illustration of this idea that, although I could never claim comradery with such a brilliant man as Woody Allen, I felt it was to the world of film what I aspire this blog to be for its genre.  If you haven’t seen it, make every effort to do so.  It will make you smile and appreciate your life for what it is and not for what it might have been or could be. 

Nostalgia Covers a Multitude of Sins

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There are moments we know, without a doubt, that we will remember fondly. But it doesn’t mean that those moments were completely idyllic or picturesque. Often times, as we dive back into our memories, they are blanketed with a think layer of nostalgia that covers a multitude of sins. Family gatherings, for instance, are often fraught with familial tensions. Unspoken but implied criticisms. Hurt feelings or frustrations. But these are not the things we remember. We remember with rose-colored glasses the good times. The unguarded enthusiasm of children experiencing things for the first time. The brash and also unguarded comments of the aged who no longer feel the need to bother with social niceties. Fingers in mixing bowls getting smacked by mammas. Christmas presents opened just a smidge at the corner when no one was looking. Or endless games of monopoly in which we seek to dominate our beloved.

But it struck me this weekend as I experienced just such a moment of pure nostalgia in the making, that it is often incredibly hard to get past the difficulties that exist in those moments so that we can see, all around us, the things we are sure to remember fondly. Why is it that we so often only appreciate things that have already passed? It is because we’re too busy dealing with the stresses of the present to notice. But shouldn’t our memories, time and time again, be a lesson to us to let go of the things that don’t matter in the present? If we can just find it in us to brush off a harsh word, let go of unwarranted criticism, or never return the slight of someone else in kind, we can remember, in the present, the love that holds us together and the joys that are the building blocks of our memories.

This weekend found me and my family in a very small town in northern Mississippi where my husband was participating in a reunion concert for a local band who’s first gig occurred 40 years previous. It was astonishingly beautiful. Already, I remember it warmly. But I do regret allowing myself to be taken up with some of the stresses that surrounded the weekend. Some of them were silly stresses. Some of them serious. But none of them will factor into the beauty of the memory. What did it matter, in the long run, if the hotel room was old and small? Or if my sick son was a bit whinny and slept in my arms for most of the concert? That, in and of itself, will bring a smile with its memory. Was it really justified of me to feel somewhat jealous of the time I didn’t get to spend with an old friend when he was surrounded by family, friends, and a girlfriend he doesn’t get to see often enough? Should I have allowed myself to embody the stresses of those around me who were prepping for the concert or dealing with their own family tensions? Or should I have been an oasis for those same people – a stress free zone to refresh their mind and spirit? Of course, none of these difficulties compared with the wonderful beauties that the weekend afforded. Such as the constant bombardment of strangers telling me how wonderful my husband was both as a person and as a musician and how much they appreciated his help over the last several months. Or seeing the pure excitement on my son’s face, despite being sick, as he watched his daddy play in a concert. Or witnessing old men relive the passions of their youth with unrivaled enthusiasm and the support of their home town for their endeavor. And seeing a mother dance with her grown son, my friend, as though no one was watching and imagining myself and my son, who was sleeping in my lap, dancing in their shoes in the not so distant future. This is the stuff of life. All the rest is not worth remembering, and so, it is not worth dwelling on.

Embracing the Clichéd

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In today’s society, where individualism is hailed as one of the highest virtues, we are often afraid of being too clichéd. The phrase, “That’s such a cliché!” is used as an insult. But sometimes I find myself wondering, is it really such a bad thing to be somewhat predictable, normal, or even unoriginal? Some things are clichéd for a reason. Because they have stood the test of time and multitudes and still hold true. I’ve taken flack from plenty of friends and sometimes my own alter-ego, for my desire to move to the suburbs. And I must admit, the individualistic, young, and still edgy side of me cringes at the idea of moving into a cookie cutter, “stepford” neighborhood, with picket fences, matching roof lines and tiny trees. But not all the suburbs are so scary. And some things are more important than being in the middle of it all. Like my son’s education. I certainly see the value in sticking it out and fighting for better education in the city rather than fleeing, but I will not use my son’s future as a weapon in that battle. And then there’s crime. Does staying put and risking the robbery of my possessions and possible harm of my family help bring crime levels down in the city or should we just move to where it is safer? But considering these things makes me wonder if I have been too quick to judge others in the past. Most of the suburbanites have probably had similar lines of reasoning that brought them to where they are today. Most of them probably have histories and lives every bit as interesting as mine, or more so. And yet I have been guilty of looking at them and thinking, “What a cliché!” We are taught from such an early age to never judge a book by its cover and yet we fight judgementalism well into adulthood and old age.

Yesterday, as my son and I were downtown enveloped in a sea of people who had gathered to celebrate Independence Day, I found myself looking around at all the faces and imagining the stories behind their eyes. We are all on wildly different journeys, and yet, too often we tend to approach people as though they should be in the same place we are. The whole event for which all these people had come together was, in and of itself, an incredible cliché. Americana at its finest. There were flags and people in patriotic attire, face painting and glow sticks, catfish and burgers, and an orchestral band playing “Yankee Doodle.” There were kids everywhere and frazzled parents trying to keep up with them. There were lawn chairs and lovers making eyes at each other. And of course, there were fireworks. But there was something beautiful and calming about the cliché. So many different people, from different walks of life and in different places in their journey, coming to celebrate the same thing. And celebrate it in the same way it has been celebrated for generations. It may be a cliché, but it is a damn good one and I’m happy I was part of it.

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn’t matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.
~Hindu teaching

Reminding Ourselves to Remember

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I recently had the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite childhood pastimes – something I hadn’t done in over a decade. I went roller skating. Was I taking Aiden for his first experience with wheels on his heels? No. Was I attending a birthday party for some friend’s child or chaperoning some other young person’s event? No. I was just reliving the good ol’ days with some coworkers and the nostalgia of it was overwhelming.

It was yet another reminder to appreciate things as they are happening and not as we look back wistfully in the rare opportunities that we have to relive them. Although I loved roller skating as a child and even as a teenager, I don’t think I ever slowed those wheels down long enough to savor the experience and recognize that I wouldn’t be able to do it forever. I’m certainly not saying that we should take every happy, wonderful moment full of innocence and joy and make it serious, sober, and appreciative. But rather that we should learn to take mental snapshots. We are all so very good at taking digital photos these days – capturing flat, visual representations of the things we experience. But there is so much more to those memories. There are smells, tastes, sounds, feels, emotions, thoughts . . . all connected in an intricate web of vitality. And our minds are capable of cataloging all of it – if we would just take a moment to breathe and remind ourselves to remember. Tell ourselves in a fraction of a second, “This is good!”

As I looked around the rink at all of the other skaters, most of them half my age, I found myself wondering how many of them would remember. The twelve-year-old boyfriend and girlfriend with matching T-shirts skating hand in hand in countless circles. The new recruit to the roller derby team, getting a strong sense of her stride. The flamboyantly gay twenty-something spinning pirouettes at each turn and squealing with delight, not caring what anyone else thought of him. The middle-aged, excessively bearded beginner skating back and forth in the center at a painstaking pace, trying to prove that you can teach and old dog new tricks. The six-year-old little girl with white skates just like mine who put my moves to shame. Will all of these people find themselves in this spot a decade later trying to pull the cobwebs off of these memories? Or will these moments flood back with a vivid force because they LIVED them now? I am very glad I took the opportunity to experience this small part of my past again. And this time I drank it in deeply and will not easily forget.