“Nostalgia- it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in
Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge
in your heart far more powerful then memory alone.”
~Don Draper;
Mad Men, ‘The Carousel’
It’s unbearably hot outside. The heat has gotten to a high
of 91 today. The highest it’s been so far, I think. I don’t expect it to go
down for the next month or so. July always seems to be the hottest month of the
summer, with August on its tail. Especially, it seems, in a town near the lake.
Despite the heat, however, I’m still drinking coffee. It’s
my second cup and I am still going strong. For some reason it seems to soothe
me and brings a sense of security to me. It reminds me of when I used to live
in Great Falls; spending nights at my grand parents house and waking up to a
maple-y smell of bacon and the strong accent of dark coffee. I knew it was
being sipped on my both of my grand parents
I can remember heading up the steps from the basement, my
eyes still groggy and the corners crusted just a little bit, my teddy bear
stuck between my arm pit. Peaking through the door to see my grand mother
sitting at her chair closest to the sliding glass door. A thin Virginia Slim
cigarette hanging from between her aging fingers, in her hands a cup of coffee
with Tweedy Bird on it.
It’s weird to look back on things. As if you open up a part
of your heart and soul when you do it, bringing a bittersweet feeling that
rushes over you.
It’s what I felt the other night when I went through old (and
I mean old) yearbooks, yearbooks from my elementary school years at
Valley View, in Great Falls. I flipped through the pages, looking at the black
and white photos of the faces I grew up with. I could only imagine how they
were like now. How much had they changed? Where were they? Are they in college?
Have children, getting married? Questions soared through my head.
However, I didn’t want to know. I wanted my memories of them
to stay un-tainted, full of the innocence we all used to have, or at least some
of us. I wanted to remember them the way we had played on the playground,
twirling on the bars in the ground, playing ridiculous games involving getting
flushed down a toilet.
Now that I think about it, isn’t summer just one nostalgic
trip? You are out of school, sure you might have a job, but you always remember
what you did summers ago. You are constantly re-visiting your past year at college
that was awesome. It brings back a twinge in your heart.
If that’s the case, I better start making some good memories
to look back on—adding them to the constant pile that keeps growing inside of
my heart.
XX
