Most of us was unmentionable back then...

Nostalgia: a mixed feeling of happiness, sadness, and longing when recalling a person, place, or event from the past, or the past in general
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

I just watched "Sabrina" with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Bogart reminds me of a short version of my grandfather. Hepburn has always seemed like the quintessential woman to me. I don't mind watching "Sabrina" because it has no real nostalgic ties for me. I never thought of Bogart as looking like my grandfather until tonight.

Many people I know love old music that was popular when they were in high school, or college. Music from those periods reminds me of those times and that makes me feel sad. I wasn't extraordinarily happy then and I have absolutely no longing to be back there. When I hear a slow sad saxophone I think of my mother and all the dreams she gave up. When I hear yakety yak on the sax, I also think of my mother.

Nostalgia is like that for me. It brings back the feelings of other times. The yearning, the wanting, the needing to please, the confusion of life lived on the inside looking out. I tried to analyze things, to make sense of them. One of my earliest memories is trying to figure out why my mother thought that turning my lamp sideways made it less bright. It seemed just as bright as ever to me. It just shone in a different place. I was looking through the bars of my crib as I wondered this, but I was glad to have that light on no matter what the reasoning was.

I watched movies about care free, happy go lucky people who ran around laughing over things that were not funny. I ran around doing things that were not funny with my own friends and laughed because we were supposed to. It wasn't sad, but it wasn't funny, or really fun either. It was just a wierd way to pass time and pretend we were something we were not.

We moved a lot. I always thought that maybe if we had stayed in one place I might have fit in better. Looking back I think maybe I would have at least had more time to find my place. In my world everything had a place. I mean absolutely everything. When I sat down, my feet were supposed to be crossed at the ankle, one arm resting lightly on a table, or chair arm. Walking was done head up, but not sticking forward, shoulders back, chest out, but not too far. Hair was ratted and sprayed and covered in netting so it did not dare to move in the wind, or curl in the dampness. Girdles and bras kept our unmentionable parts, and most of us was unmentionable back then, from moving. I could not date until I had a "coming out" party. I came out of one encyclopedia of rules and merged into another equally restrictive and confusing set.

Finally I actually did move far away to Kansas. In Kansas I was my own person, but eventually we moved back to Illinois and all the old nostalgic memories kept finding ways to creep back into my life at various and odd times. Echoes of my past are like that little guy in the movie who jabbers away nonstop and sounds very important -- it isn't quite possible to make out what he is saying, but he never stops saying it.

I have spent a lot of time and effort getting past nostalgia. Perhaps my only problem is that when life starts feeling repetitive and nostalgic, it is my cue to move on, find a place in the now. I love the now. It sets me free to be the me that is present and accounted for, a freer, happier me. I love old movies if the story is good, old music if the tunes grab me, old books if the plot pulls me in. The memories I keep tucked away for some future day when I might need to reference them for something I am writing, or decide it is time to be sad.