The Unexpected Blessing of Nostalgia
I thought it was a good idea just to go back and look.
You know, take a peek.
I wanted to revisit my past, the places of unfettered laughter
and the joy of my childhood.
I remembered the simple delight of a swing and longed for the time where my laughter was simple.
The shadow of a cloud came over the playground, but I waved it away.
I continued further to visit the place of my youth; high school and college.
I felt fresh goose pimples as I thought of the first dance.
Not ready to return to reality, I eagerly went in my mind to visit prom night. A shadow of disappointment invaded my reverie. It was that cloud again.
I pushed it away as I visited college and the sunny skies turned cloudy.
All of a sudden, I remembered the insecurities and questions:
Would I ever be good enough? How do I measure against everyone else?
Not pretty enough. Not smart enough. Not outgoing enough.
And then the solution: I needed to manufacture a public face so that my private insecurities wouldn’t show.
That public face served me until I accepted the face that was my own: laugh lines, wrinkles, successes, failures, quirky humor and confrontational nature….all mine.
Sometimes a look back deceives us into forgetting what really happened. We see the sunny day on the swing but forget about the clouds
and tears of pain and disappointment.
We may even be tempted to “write those cloudy parts out” of our retrospective scenery, but who we are today won’t allow it.
I’m grateful that 58-year-old me won’t let her 8-year-old self tell the whole story. My look back had an unexpected blessing….
It made me appreciate today.
Copyright 2017 from “Not Just Any Kind of Woman: The Middle Years” by Michele Aikens. available December 2017.
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