Nostalgic this weekend. The word itself describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form. It is a learned formation of a Greek compound ultimately meaning "returning home" with some type of pain or ache. I've been looking through some old pictures of my childhood on Key Biscayne, Florida and longing for those easy, free days of youth....
I wrote the following many years ago, when I experienced my very first REAL bout of nostalgia. I'm feeling the same feeling now and the below writing still applies....
There seems to be quickening to search for people from our youth; those who felt with us when we felt a lot, when we were alive, when our heaviest weight was the water that held down our bodies in the ocean. We need these people who remember us free, unrestricted and new; whose fresh eyes looked at our lives and saw possibilities and hope.
The urge to find these people usually hits in the middle years of our stories; after the punch has been told. When we begin to think that our hearts are a bit hardened, and all the emotions we will ever feel have already been felt. Perhaps this is a time in our lives when we realize that at one point we knew what profoundness was, but we lost it or became numb to the sensation of wonder- we closed the doors that led us into the secret world- or the doors were closed for us by time, neglect, and decisions made in times of weakness. It is during this time in our lives, when we often look back and remember the people who started this long journey with us. Somewhere we lost them, took a different path, drifted, as we are supposed to, away from their innocent glances and their shared hearts. Many of us looked forward to the breaking away from our youths, and most of us ran quickly into the mid-section of our lives without a look back, or a hesitant glance in the direction of our past. Many of us did this with good reason, or so we thought, and too many of us forgot so much about how we became exactly who we became. And now, it is us, who require the aching reconnection.
No matter how successful we’ve become, how many toys we play with, how much wealth we’ve accumulated or lost, or how much our minds have become educated and learned… nothing compares to the life found during our early years. You know, the life before we had a life.
I believe that we can never replace or forget the ones who experienced the firsts with us. The ones who held us when we cried with abandon over a failed love for the first time; the ones who laughed all night with us the first time we drank too much; the friends, who for the first time, broke the law together even in some small way; the ones who were the first to be naked and innocent, then naked and experienced with us; and especially the people who loved us when we were bad to the bone and thought ourselves unlovable.
People search all the time for lost loves, lost emotions, lost youths and lost friends. We need this reminder, this reconnection to something much bigger then ourselves, and a remembrance that we are still, in fact, alive and vital. This desperation in the reconnecting is there for a reason. It is felt with force and purpose and it won’t be ignored or dismissed until the reconnection is established. We must still be vital, our hearts tell us, we must exist in some other dimension, some forgotten space of days long ago. We try not to believe that we have become only our roles which we have insisted on becoming during the middle years….We existed once, before the character scenes became reality, and before we believed, and others believed, that we were only what we did. Ah, there was a time when we did nothing,(and did it well) and we existed. Find that again, our hearts tell us….find that now…..find those who remember…..
It is possible that this is a limited experience; limited to those who grew up in small towns, or isolated islands. Where the attractions inside of us were bigger than the attractions outside. Where we walked, barefoot, to nowhere for hours on end. A place where we rode bikes or handlebars to places that had names but no buildings: Shady Groves, Mashta Point, Secluded, Hobie Beach, Sunset…. And the structures that were frequented were merely an accumulation place, a stage, a starting point to begin a journey to nowhere: Sir Pizza, 7-11, the church, Calusa. Perhaps the people that set the stage for this longing are the people who all had nicknames that everybody knew. Not only knew but knew why: Donkey, Smitty, Beaker, Bird, Doc, Shemp.
Maybe when you grow up in a place where the air is thick and hot, and the fragrance changes from sweet gardenia to sun-baked fish before noon, where the wind blows incessantly and the rain visits everyday at 3pm to clean out the air and make the sky clear before the big show of sunset, where water surrounds you like a womb, secure, sheltered, protected from “the others”….maybe when you come of age in a place like this, your senses are permanently tainted by its confidence. And the call to return to her shores is heard as loud as her breaking waves, and her blowing palms.
It is possible that this longing to reconnect with our pasts is limited to a few, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. There is a reason for reunions, a reason that isn’t clear at anyone’s 10-year reunion. But wait, wait for 20-30 years…and see what happens to you as it approaches. Perhaps it is our mortality that comes into play as we privately seek out our old ties…. Perhaps island living on Key Biscayne had its own rules, its own agenda, and its own requests of us. It wouldn’t surprise me if it did.
I believe that if we are ever able to finally find these people of which I speak, revisit these places etched in our memories, if we can reconnect with the ones who recall our early smiles, our first embraces, our brand new worlds -if we can find them, we find ourselves; our true selves. And, on the right island, with the right music and the right ocean breeze, we can stop time, hit rewind and remember just how we became who we became….
