Call me sentimental

Nostalgia is my stock in trade

January 22, 2025

Photo by IJ Portwine on Unsplash

According to my mom, I was sentimental as a little girl. That’s a kissin’ cousin to nostalgia and melancholy, both default positions for me. The three emotions feel the same: like a deep aching and sense of longing in my heart. It’s both painful and familiar; almost pleasurable.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing even more nostalgia than usual. I attribute it to three events: a new year; the beginning of the new presidency; and a flood in my walk-in closet.

The new year is classic. Thinking back to the people we lost in 2024 triggered me to recall the excitement of working on the Harris/Walz campaign, and its accompanying optimism. It was the beginning of a new community for me and many other Democrats/progressives. People of all ages wanted to participate in the urgent effort to prevent a second Trump presidency. Remembering the thrill of the summer announcement of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and the giddy days that followed. Regularly writing postcards and letters in cafes with other activists was fun and created camaraderie. It also staved off the specter of fear and helplessness.

The results of the election hit me and my compatriots hard. Although we always knew it was a possibility, the reality was a bitter pill. The sense of loss and grief was profound, and necessitated stepping back from political work to tend to our own personal care. Like many others, I had to fight depression and an impending sense of doom. That was mixed with nostalgia about prior elections, such as Obama’s and Biden’s, when we were elated about winning. The light they had brought into our lives seemed on the verge of being snuffed out by Trump’s darkness.

Another loss was the wonderful drama-free period during much of Joe Biden’s presidency. It was refreshing and exhilarating to not be in crisis mode every moment of the day, wondering when the other shoe would drop.

The inauguration made the nightmare a fait accompli. In the weeks between the election and January 20, we were warned of the laundry list of edicts that Trump intended to institute. But when the date of doom arrived, I decided to avoid watching the inauguration or reading about it online. Instead, I participated in a webinar led by Rebecca Solnit, a writer and activist in my age group. She was joined by other luminaries. Just watching and listening to them catapulted me back to my 20s, when so many of us were fiercely committed to anti-war protests; feminism; civil rights; and other critical issues of the day.

It connected me with my younger self, who is still alive and well inside this aging body. That released a feeling of melancholy for a time in my life that is forever gone. It also reminded me of all the music from the 1960s and 1970s, and their messages, such as, ”For What It’s Worth,” written in 1966 by Stephen Stills and recorded by Buffalo Springfield. (“Paranoia strikes deep/into your life it will creep/it starts when you’re always afraid/step out of line/the men come and take you away.”)

The third event that triggered intense nostalgia was a personal, almost silly one. My upstairs neighbor’s washing machine overflowed last week, and the water came down into my bedroom walk-in closet. That’s where I store my photo albums going back forty years or more; along with memorabilia from concerts gone by; my school degrees, my Masters’ thesis; computer records; my bowling ball and shoes, from when I was on a league about 15 years ago; and mementos of my trips to Guatemala, to visit my son.

It happened around 1am. Luckily, I’m a night owl. When I walked into my bathroom to prepare for bed, I noticed water on the floor. Nothing was leaking. I followed the water to my hall and bedroom closet. There, I discovered that much of the floor in the closet was soaked. I panicked, fearing that I’d lose my treasured photo albums and other meaningful items.

Like a madman, I raced back and forth, hauling everything out of the closet and dumping it into the bedroom and living room. I took a moment to call the building’s maintenance guy, who reported the news about the upstairs apartment. Apparently, the water had leaked all the way down to the lobby. (I’m on a lower floor.)

I cancelled my plans for the long holiday weekend and hunkered down in my apartment, going through what felt like a history of my life. In a way, it was an enforced cleanout, as well as a major trip down Memory Lane. Seeing photos of family and friends who are now gone; and looking at pictures of me in my younger years was jarring and saddening. However, I still feel the thread that connects all of us, through the years and into eternity.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

It’s been a long time since I sorted my photos. In the past, it was nostalgic to see them, but I always thought of myself having many years ahead. Now, with my parents and other older family members gone, I’m on the front lines, so to speak. No more buffers. The realization that I’ve lived more years than I have ahead of me is a revelation. It makes my remembrances that much more powerful. This might be the last time I do a major nostalgic dig into my “archives.”

I also find myself reminiscing about my careers in book publishing, public relations, and acupuncture. I vividly recall the people I worked with, and can even hear conversations in my mind’s ear.

I can take Rocky & Bullwinkle’s “wayback machine” to when I was a child and spent many hours holed up in my bedroom; drawing, writing, reading, and listening to music. On a more serious note, those were the days of diving under our school desks — drills to prepare us for a possible nuclear war we all feared.

That leads me to memory-keepers. They are the friends, family members, and colleagues who lived with us through various times in our lives, both good and bad, and can reminisce with us. It’s especially amazing when they remember things or people who I had forgotten.

When I lost my mom, my dad, and my uncle, that generation and specific shared memories vanished with them. Frequently, I want to call my mom and ask her if she can remember a particular incident. Sometimes, my sister can do this with me, but there are older memories that my parents had, which they frequently talked about. They feel like my own memories — the Depression, the Swing Era, World War II, and how they went through these periods.

Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Unsplash

(As an aside, my sister and I share a passion for the Beatles, and we were able to transform our nostalgia for our early years into a current reality, when we went to Liverpool with my brother-in-law in May.)

I had a very old girlfriend who I lived with when we were in our early 20s in NYC. We shared experiences with boyfriends, careers, concerts, and life in the city, during our young adulthood. She has a mental illness that prevents her from communicating with me. It’s so sad, and all of our joint memories have just about disappeared . I can go into a daydream where we are together in the 1970s, with people who are probably now dead and gone.

Fortunately, I have other longtime friends on the same wavelength. All we need to do is mention a name or an event, and we’re off and running. We fill in the blanks for each other, and ruefully recall bygone episodes.

I’m delighted that my son is almost as sentimental as I am, and he has a long memory. We share feelings about many people and events in our joint past. He fills in the blanks for me. Looking at photos of him as a young boy brings back those days and my then-marriage to his dad, and our wonderful farmhouse. It feels like another lifetime, especially since his dad has been gone for eight years.

One other way I can indulge in nostalgia is when fellow Baby Boomers post photos and text about shared times gone by — songs, bands, outdated technology, and even notorious scandals.

I’ve found that this period of nostalgia has brought on many vivid dreams of the past, and of people I haven’t seen in years. It’s very comforting, although I’m sad when I awake.

Nostalgia just seems to be in my DNA. How about you?