Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
In this issue of Odd Company, I want to talk a little bit about nostalgia. Merriam-Webster defines nostalgia as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Sorry, but that strikes me as an impossible word salad. Here’s a clearer way to think about nostalgia. It is bittersweet. That is, it’s happiness combined with sadness. Then throw in a pinch of yearning for something you’ve lost — a place, a time, a person.
When I was a little girl, my parents lived next door to my grandmother and my great-grandmother. Great-granny was an immigrant. Pregnant out of wedlock in the early 20th century, she had been forced to leave her child in Switzerland and flee to America, where she had cousins who took her in. I remember Granny sitting by the window of her little cottage in Reno, looking out at our nice-but-not-marvelous mountains, with tears running down her cheeks. She knew her child was happy and well cared for, but she would never see him again. Nor would she ever see her beautiful homeland again. If I climbed onto her lap, asked her why she was crying, and reached into her apron pocket for a candy, it was usually enough to stop her tears. There were surely things about her life in America that made her happy, but she couldn’t help yearning for that long-ago child and her old home in the Alps.
The stories she told of Switzerland were filled with high, green meadows; fat cows with big bells; alpenhorns and yodelers; happy milking songs; window boxes full of red and white geraniums. I never heard her mention the shaming or the grief she experienced there. It’s much easier to remember the good things about a place or a time you’re yearning for than it is to remember the unpleasant things. That’s the thing about nostalgia. It can distort our memories to the point where they become fantasies.
This seems a good place for the music I have in mind tonight. This song was written by the singer-songwriter Randy Newman, probably around 1972. It was included in his album, “Sail Away,” which came out that year. Newman is famous for ironic and satirical lyrics. See what you think about “Dayton, Ohio - 1903.” Could Dayton…could anyplace, for that matter…ever have been this perfect? It’s definitely a nostalgic song.
I’m interested in nostalgia because I see so much of it around right now. It’s one of the wedges certain canny politicians and journalists are using to cause strife and division among us. If you believe America was once a better country than it is now (and, to be honest, I think many of us — possibly most of us — do believe that), you are fair game for the nostalgia sirens. I don’t mean “sirens” like the ones on police cars. I mean “sirens” like the mythical creatures who used enchanting songs to lure Greek sailors too close to the rocks.
Over the past week or so, I’ve been reading Brené Brown’s new book, “Atlas of the Heart.” Actually, I’ve been listening to it, too. The audiobook, read by the author, is considerably richer than most. Brown has a conversational style, and doesn’t hesitate to repeat or even expand on passages she feels are especially important as she reads. My kind of author.
“Atlas of the Heart” is a discussion of the many emotions we all experience. As a writer of fiction, I’ve been a big collector of all the words we have for emotions. They’re important to my work. Because we all experience the full range of emotions during our lifetime, we can use these words to connect with each other. When I say “fear,” you know exactly what that is and even how it feels physically. It’s pretty much the same for you as it is for me. Emotions are probably the biggest piece of common ground we have as human beings.
The truth is that when I write stories, I try to combine the emotion words with the physical feelings they usually cause. I don’t just say, “He was afraid.” I say, “Fear ran down his spine like a column of cold ants.” Or I say, “Fear made his heart bang against his ribs so hard he wondered if others could hear it.” There are a couple of good reasons for this technique. First, using sensory details makes a story seem more real and convincing to a reader. But second, not everyone has a complete handle on the vocabulary of emotions. If you grew up in a family where emotions weren’t discussed much (as I did), you might not have a full range of words to describe the way you feel at any given moment. One of the things Brown’s book does for us is educate us about the exact meanings of common words for emotions. There are subtleties that are rarely considered, though they ought to be. The more exact our shared understanding of these words is, the easier it is to connect when we’re talking with each other.
It’s important to keep in mind that the America you miss might not be the same as the America I miss. Each of us has our own memories, and every good memory becomes burnished with use till it’s impossibly bright. Eventually, cherished memories can become quite distant from the reality they started from. The singer of “Dayton, Ohio - 1903” recalls the town as a place where everyone stops to say hello and invite neighbors to tea, and “folks are nice to you.” Likewise, the sirens tell us to remember America as a place of warmth, virtues, noble motives, and power used only for good. Has there ever been such a place? It’s worth asking.
Brené Brown points out that when nostalgia is combined with rumination (“…involuntary focus on negative and pessimistic thoughts…”), it can lead to depression and isolation. It may be that too many of us are yearning for a time and place that never really existed. A place where the hills are always green, folks are always nice to us, people invite strangers to tea on Sunday afternoons…and young women are never shamed for human failings. Who wouldn’t get depressed at how far we are from that ideal picture?
Buddhists say we never step in the same river twice. The river, like everything else, is always changing. The river we stepped in last year — like the home we lived in as children — is gone forever. We can never really return; we can only imagine returning. Our time might be better spent making the world of today a kinder, more compassionate place.
Happy spring to you. See you in April! My adieu gift to you is this poem, which I wrote some years ago, during a particularly nostalgic interlude in 2005.
PRESERVATION
Jewel-colored jars collect
On our cellar shelves,
Cool as May spins
Toward the furnace of July,
Warm as October gathers
Frost, bright examples of
All we wish to savor
From good days past:
Golden dandelions pressed
Into sweet wine,
Tomatoes, pickles, violet plums,
Apricot sunsets captured
Beside dried chamomile, mint,
Faintly summer scented.
January always comes,
Count on it,
Trees empty of all but snow.
Then we must light a fire,
Speak of each brilliant berry,
Spoons clinking
Against boiled glass.