On Nostalgia

Nostalgia. One of those words whose etymology is relatively well known. A refresher for those who’ve forgotten: in Greek, nostos means ‘return home’ and algos, ‘pain.’

Lately I’ve been overcome with it. What started this flood of feeling, this emotional ache that arrived around the same time as my sore neck? (And that is three weeks ago, now, I see, consulting my squill post from April 14th!) And how much longer must I swim through these Aegean/aging seas of wistfulness and longing? I hope: not much longer. These are hard waters to tread. Perhaps the phase will end in tandem with the stiffness of my neck, much less stiff now than it was when I woke up that Monday morning in mid April.

And I guess I did a deep dive voluntarily this weekend, acting on a Friday morning impulse (the spark came while I was doing laps at the pool) and packing up the family early Saturday to go revisit Lindsay, Ontario, the small town where I grew up. And we would swim there, too, in the pool that has not changed one iota in twenty years. There was the same oversized poster hanging in the same spot: If you’re not within arms’ reach, you’ve gone too far. The same half-assed system for hanging the childrens’ life jackets (over the back railing of the therapy pool). The same cubbies for outdoor shoes, the same colour paint in the change rooms (a soft mint), the same strikingly pretty, neatly-dressed woman energetically managing the young lifeguards with the same fascinating combination of strictures and wit (though her dark hair, always worn in a bun, has, like mine, begun to go grey).

Was this nostalgic phase seeded on March 29th, the day I noticed my first translucent strand? That day I cried and consoled myself by buying white tulips and silver pussy willows for the kitchen table, as if to say: “achromatic colours can be beautiful, too.”

Saturday, before swimming, we went to the first farmer’s market of the year - the same market where my parents had their stand selling my mum’s baked goods and jams and flowers and produce and my dad’s handmade cedar furniture. And here it did feel different… all new vendors, no one I recognized. Perhaps unsurprisingly, because she must be in her seventies now, Barb Corner was no longer at her corner where Victoria meets Kent; gone are the tea biscuits and the warm bosomy hugs.

But we did bump into my childhood crush who had in tow his three beautiful children, immaculately dressed and, given how pure and Christian he still seems to be, probably immaculately conceived as well. And we did bump into an old bestie from ballet class who ended up marrying another boy I’ve known since kindergarten - the crush’s old best friend. But we don’t know each other anymore, and only in his timid, blushing reception of my boisterous hello did it all come back to me, the way the milk-white skin under all those gorgeous freckles goes deep dusky pink any time anyone pays him the slightest attention. And only when his improbable wife, my ballet friend, did a little développé in answer to my plié to demonstrate, for her tiny daughters, that we were bunheads once as they are now, did the ice break for a moment before it closed above us in our hasty, awkward farewell.

Is the nostalgia due to the books that I’ve been reading? Experience by Martin Amis, Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellows. The peculiar sadness of lives lived then ended, summarized.

And we went to the library - the library! That dear, redbrick building with its gable roof and four white pillars, its rotunda in the back where, preciously, they keep the childrens’ section. The internet tells me the architectural style is “Ontario Gothic Revival.” And nothing there has changed except for the addition of books published in the interim, and the absence of the lobby display of dashing kimonos in Astilbe hues of dark reds and sweet pinks.

Since 1969, Lindsay has had a twin city: Nayoro, Japan. I wonder if, like a sister, Nayoro decided it was time for Lindsay to give her clothes back?

Outside of the library there is a stone pillar containing an “eternal flame” and a time capsule put there in the year 2000 that is due to be opened soon (in 2025). I was 11 years old when it was erected - Lu’s age now. We were still using desktop computers and dial-up internet, wall phones and CD players.

Is the nostalgia related to the fear that I’m falling behind in a world that demands I keep up with its advances?

We took a good photo outside of the firehall where my dad cut his teeth in his chosen profession, a profession he’s since left but that informs what he does now (he’s a fire inspector). Sadie may not be a Dalmation, but she is white and black, and she looks awfully cute sat up between Lu and my love by the big bell at the base of the tower.

We did not take a photo at the ballet studio. I was disappointed that the building (an old warehouse with creaking hardwood floors and enormous windows that you can tilt inward to let in some air with the pull of a chain) had been painted black (it was formerly white) with the tacky addition of metallic gold details (sills, jambs, and lintels).

Perhaps the best photo was taken in Burns Bulk Food (formerly Country Call), not only because Lu - whose energy was at that moment flagging - was pleased to be allowed three choices from the candy bins, but also because with its orange and cream chequered floor and symmetrical alignments, it’s a setting fit for Wes Anderson, photogenic as.

And buoyed with midmorning sugar, we went on to stroll the main drag, stopping in at Sweet Annie’s and Kent Florist, saluting the façade of the Academy Theatre where I danced in a dozen June recitals (they say it is haunted by the ghost of a lady who tripped on the red velvet stairs and died), then descended to the riverside (which still stinks of dead fish) and looped back up to the car so I could show them my old schools.

Is it because Lu is in grade six, which means that a long, eight-year chapter is coming to a close as she will graduate from Old Orchard and go on to a new school? Is that why I am feeling such nostalgia?

We went to my old houses, too, in the order in which I inhabited them: first, Nayoro Place, a social housing project of butter-yellow brick by the river where I remember throwing up a quart of strawberries on the tire swing, eating earwigs, and watching Aristocats on repeat. Then the famous Hundred Acre Farm. Then that house on Cresswell over which an evil stepmother reigned for a time and where the trees my dad planted are now full-grown and beautiful.

Is it because I am leaving one home soon for the other? Saying goodbye for the summer to this city that by turns I hate and love, the people in it who I (always, deeply) adore?

Here’s my wish: that today, the sixth of May, might be the climax and the end of this long and strange phase of nostalgia. It’s bizarre how much this particular date has come to mean over the years. First, half a lifetime ago, when I met her at eighteen, I found out it was a dear friend’s birthday. Now en route to her down under: a card bearing 35 reasons why I love her. It was too easy to fill, so she’s going to have to keep on getting old. Next, and one of the reasons why I decided it made sense for us to attempt parenthood together: Lu’s bio dad shares this friend’s birthday. And then last year, another very dear friend lost her husband on May 6th. How can one date signify so much joy, so much sorrow? It’s a day that drowns me with nostalgia, and tomorrow I am determined - not to forget - but to come up for air.

Where did this nostalgia come from, sudden as the spring, heartbreaking and blue as the muscari in the ditch that Lulu happened upon as she was gathering poofy yellow catkins reminiscent of Australian mimosa on a dirt back road as we started for home? It is a question that might well be without any one answer, a question like where did all this time go?