Nostalgia the Thief of Now, What a B

"Stay out of my nightmares, stay out of my dreams, You're not even welcome in my memories"

Is there a word for when the nostalgia of the past, obviously, meets the euphoria of the heartwarming feeling you are flooded with while watching your kids gleefully dance to Return of the Mac in the very same place that the most immediate memory is of being with your best friend one summer day while she met up with her Tinder date for the first time but brought me as a surprise? It is like some kind of nostalgia inception. What is the word for that?

That friend and I had a bizarre and very sad falling out immediately when I moved to Portland making this moment even more inceptualized. While I was sitting there in the side portion of ¿por qué no? with these glorious children under the heating lamp I was taken back in time to that beautiful warm summer day but I wasn’t even immediately aware of this memory because of the feeling of joy I felt while watching my kids experience ‘fresh’ tortillas chips and Jarritos in North Portland for the first time. 

I have been having this experience A LOT! Like hiking Pisgah last weekend, I was flooded with all the good memories and happiness of hiking Pisgahin years past. Hiking this exact trail over 10 years ago with my now dead mom, my now husband Anthony, my now two young children. The continual surprise flooding of warmth and gravity of moments past and present colliding has been jarring to say the least. 

I wonder if nostalgia has the latin root of, “NOOOO!” This fleeting ephemeral feeling that smothers us with little to no warning and leaves us with a happy residue of moments past while also eliciting a kind of sadness. Like today, even recalling my time with my kids fills me with a literal palpable happiness while simultaneously filling me with all the unresolved emotions of my lost friend. I am not sure I have ever paid attention to these feelings or maybe I haven't really ever experienced them.

I don’t think I knew how much I actually missed Portland, sure I knew I missed Oregon as a whole and in a very general sense, the people, my friends, the trees, weather but I don’t think I would ever say that I specifically missed Portland. Maybe I thought what’s to miss, you already did it so well, you cannot top that time dont try you idiot. Plus there’s the thought that my time in Portland got overshadowed by the joy I felt in Denver and now that I think about it this very feeling of nostalgia meets present day happiness in a weird annoying dance was present there too. The joy of the best part of my childhood with my mom and my uncles and my aunt and my grandpa were all serpentined with the fun and excitement of exploring Capitol Hill, park, and every 14er possible with Anthony and Falkor.

But when Anthony and I decided to move to Portland I did not expect to be so happy about it. I do this a lot, I don’t really have anxiety because well, simply put I just don’t worry about the future much in terms of what I cannot control. That doesn’t mean I don't worry, I am obviously a stress case, more so with the presence of these little monsters and often about the health of my one true love, Falkor but as a whole I am not a worrier and I maintain this by accomplishing task after task, after task, so that no stone is left unturned. Even the daily task of making our bed and organizing our home helps with this feeling of security and accomplishment. But that means that when these very obvious big feelings arise I am pretty taken aback. “Oh Jasmine, you are going back to a place in your life that quite possibly could have been the pinnacle of your 20’s and young adult experience and you haven’t thought about the emotional impact that might have now that you are living there again with your husband and family and without your dead mom?” Yes, when said out loud it does seem obvious. 

There has just been this disconnect in realizing that you can leave a place, a literal physical place and live a whole other life while that place keeps going. We left Hood River and lived in Santa Fe, in Denver and in Maui, we then lived through covid, started our own business, got married, had two kids, Anthony got sober, my mom died, our dog had literally 5 massive surgeries and then we came back here to Portland. After all of that that we lived and experienced away from Oregon, there is still the like Camper World or whatever company that is alive and well on the right side of I-5 South bound on your way to Eugene. These like random staples are just still there. Like, “what?” It is like that guy gimpy on insta always saying, “you know what riiiippps?” And it’s like, yeah nostalgia rips and I think maybe it also sucks? Because it kind of messes with what I am trying to do with my kids. Like, did the memory of Anna and that summer day with that random Tinder guy that we made feel really uncomfortable, who I think drove an electric car and was a school teacher, add anything to this new moment with my kids? I don’t know. I feel like it kind of stole something from that moment with my kids and that my friends, I think is what I am upset about. Nostalgia, the thief. Stop taking from me and forcing me to grieve things I don’t care to think about.

I am just pretty sad about the loss of my friend, she’s not dead just to me, or who I thought was a really good friend. And that is the actual issue with nostalgia. You can’t control that B. She shows up whenever she wants and smothers you with whatever deep or not so deep tactical emotion she can find and it just lingers right on the surface of your entire being like the residue of a thick, cheap lotion. The kind of lotion that you have to use a towel to get off your hands. The worst kind. I don’t want this lotion on me. 

I don’t know, I don't know if I like these pop ups of random memories playing in my head everywhere I go like clips from an indie film or if I hate them and they seem pretty intrusive and mostly unwelcome. I don’t think it's that, I think I just hate that I can't choose the memory and feeling that arises. I didn't really want to leave ¿por qué no? and be left with this lingering ick about my lost friendship of 10 years that has had zero closure because I was ghosted but here we are. 

So, I guess I’ll just do what we all do in a break up and make a reel about my kids and the happiness they had eating chips, dancing and exploring while spilling Jarritos all over their faces because at the end of the day those memories are what matter most and deserve to live rent free in my head. What a gift to have loved and lost only to have so much daily love every single day.

Also, goes without saying go to ¿por qué no?! The Jingle Jangle Margarita and brisket tacos and flan are lit!