My Nostalgia

Recently I was talking with a friend about the idea of nostalgia, the idea of taking a peek into the past and why this little glimpse makes us feel so sad or so strange. As a child growing up I took comfort in "old things", I couldn't bear to throw the tiniest scrap of paper away. An old movie ticket, a birthday card, a feather I'd found in one of my many nature hunts outside. I hoarded memories and objects like a tiny pack rat, afraid that by tossing out that plastic toy I'd won in a vending machine that I was somehow hurting its feelings, neglecting its very existence. My closet and my backpacks were overrun with stuff, stuff that at the time felt very important and all consuming. As an 9 year-old that soft, checkered blanket with the bunny ears attached felt antique, an object from my past. But what is the past to a 9 year-old?

I used to revel in nostalgia, I would pick and prod and cradle old necklaces, retro Barbie doll clothes my aunt passed down to me, some old rocks I'd collected at the science museum. Even as a little girl I felt that all of these treasures somehow managed to tell my story, they were mapping my life as inanimate objects.

I grew older and I learned to love pictures the way I loved old playdough creatures dried out from the sun. Pictures from my childhood, my parent's childhood, my grandparent's childhood. I would creep into my mom's bedroom and open the wooden hope chest that was overflowing with photographs at the end of her bed, then thumb through each album one by one. It was comforting to imagine my parents as kids like me, then as teenagers who met and got married, then as young parents. It felt good to stare at my family, my history.

At my grandma's house I'd repeat the same process, beg her to drag the giant box of black and white photographs down from the laundry room shelf. Ask over and over again, "is this really you grandma?" "is this really dad as a kid?" A still of my dad in black framed glasses from the 60's or my Italian grandmother herself with big, dark hair that couldn't be tamed in the Florida heat of the 1950's.

There is something very glamours about black and white photos, life's imperfections seem to vanish under the grey tones. Women look beautiful and men look handsome and life seems more perfect.

Nowadays I feel less inclined to look to the past for comfort, I purged my bedroom long ago from my sticker collection and the shoebox of notes I'd passed back and forth in class with my friends. Now I find myself drawn to simple, clean lines. I want my life to feel more like an Ikea showroom and less like a warm space filled with weird odds and ends.

It is so easy to hop onto the computer and stalk other people's memories but now I try to avoid my own. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older but I find it painful to look at pictures of my time abroad in Italy, it makes my heart ache for a time that I can't have back. And maybe that is what is most beautiful and sad about our memories, we each long for a moment that has slipped through our grasp all too soon, and it was perfect.