Nostalgia

We were young and it was summer. There were always popsicles. There were always games to be played and adventures to be had. There were always old friends to be found and new friends to be made. We laughed a lot, and ran a lot, and stayed outside until it grew too dark to see. Someone was always calling us home. There was no time for grief.

I’m not sure if anyone, anywhere, ever stops missing that. The world never again feels quite as possible as the days we were young and in love with our lives. We never expected to lose so much. We never considered that we could be anything but happy.

It is nostalgia that calls to me on this unusually warm April day. All around me children are laughing in the streets and running through sprinklers and chasing down ice cream trucks. It feels like summer, which is no summer in particular, but the summer of childhood that never leaves us and can never be relived. We couldn’t have known it wouldn’t last forever. We wouldn’t have believed it, anyway.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to see the end at the very beginning. I don’t know if this is true for everyone. I don’t know if it comes from being a child of divorce or a writer or a person with failed relationships or someone who has had to cope with the death of loved ones. It might be inevitable or it might be that experience has made me cynical, or at the very least skeptical. I suspect it’s a little of both, and I suspect I’m not alone in it.

I want to believe in happy endings. I want to be the kind of person who believes in happy endings. But I’ve learned to prepare for that not to happen, and in trying to toughen myself to the world, I’ve lost a certain softness.

What I miss most about my childhood is not the feeling of happiness or safety or comfort. It is not the way days always felt long and full and important. It is not the friendships or the adventures or the sound of mother’s voice calling us home for dinner. It is the certainty I felt that my life would always be that way – so simple, so nourishing, so pure.

I never thought about it that way, of course. To do so would have meant the recognition of alternatives, and for happy children, those don’t exist. There is only here and now. There are only friends and games and popsicles. There is only giggling. There are no foolish questions like “What if? and “What next?” “And then what?” There is only endless summer.

I miss being able to live in the present, as only children, and perhaps other enlightened beings, ever really can. I miss not having plans, and not needing plans, and not planning to make plans when things feel helpless. I miss not feeling helpless. I miss feeling invincible. I miss the softness of summer days.

It is a difficult balance, to be an intelligent being and to live life outside of your head. I haven’t yet learned to stop writing the next chapter before the current one is complete. I haven’t yet learned to stop asking “What if?” and “What next?” “And then what?” I haven’t yet been wise enough in adulthood to think like a child.

One day I will be old, if I’m lucky, and there will be no more need for planning. I look forward to this. I am nostalgic for it, though it has happened yet.

It is the one ending I like to imagine, the ending that doesn’t keep me from beginning, the ending I want to believe will be happy. There will be no more time for questions or grief. There will only be long, important days. There will only be thoughts of laughter and friendships and adventures. There will only be endless summers within me.

There will be nothing left to do but continue to play until it grows too dark to see. And then the time will come when I will hear it, echoing over decades, over the course of an entire life – the sound of someone calling me home.

How It Came To Be

 

It feels as though I am always leaving the door open. I ask you over and over again to come in. In winter I have saved you a seat by the fire and made you a cup of tea. In summer I have turned on the air conditioning and saved you a rainbow popsicle. In rain I have offered to share my shelter with you. In sunshine I have offered you a place in my garden.

But instead you stand on the front porch of my heart and over and over again decline. You are forever just outside the door, as if to reassure yourself that if someone were to ask, you could say that you were there. But it is not enough just to be there, hovering outside the boundaries of love. It is not enough to stand beside me without knowing what’s happening inside. It is not enough to simply be invited in. You have to step through the threshold for it to count.

But you refuse. You stand outside my door and tell me how good the winter air is for your heart, how good the hot summer sun is for your head, how soothing the torrential rainfall is for the soul. You tell me I am foolish for not knowing that. You tell me I am not smart enough to understand. You tell me I am not worthy of your company.

Perhaps you are right.

After all, I am the foolish, stupid girl who keeps asking you to come in. I am the one who keeps making an extra cup of tea and saving an extra popsicle. I am the one sitting beside an empty chair. I am the one who keeps expecting things to change even though they never have, even though you have made it clear they never will. I am the one silly enough – or hopeful enough – to think I could someday live up to your expectations. I am the silly, foolish, hopeful one who keeps wishing you could live up to mine.

Meanwhile your popsicle is melting. Your tea is getting cold. My hope for us is fading.

You stand outside my window and scream that brilliance is a burden I am lucky not to have to bear. You think that you are explaining why it is difficult for you to come in, but all that I hear is that I am not invited out. Out into this world where you stand, among the brilliant and articulate and successful and accomplished.

And so I recede further away. I close the curtains. I ask you over and over again to just come in and sit with me for a while, tell me about your life, listen to me about mine. I plead with you. Come in. Sit. Talk. Listen. Forgive me. Love me. Please.

All you hear is weakness.

From the other room I hear your voice on the answering machine without even having to get up. “You don’t know a thing about poetry. Your writing would be better if you simplified it. Get to the point.”

So I stand up.

I walk to the door.

I turn the lock.

Click.

And for the first time, you are impressed by my succinct actions. For the first time, you see I can be as cold hearted and hot headed and poetically direct as you. You realize that we’re not so different. You realize that getting to know me might have been worthwhile. You understand that you should have come in.

You stand on the front porch of my heart, failing to realize, in all of your genius, that the invitations have stopped. The door has closed. The lock has been turned, and it’s already too late to tell me of your new brilliant discovery. It’s already too late for that to be enough.