Part 1: Nostalgia?
This last stretch of time living back in Santa Barbara has been a really nice break. For a while, SB was somewhat dry and dead…. Then came Amy’s acceptance to Harvard, leading us to pack everything we owned into a huge rental truck and drive it across the States to set up new temporary residence in Cambridge, MA. We lived there a while, but once her program was over, we packed everything up again, took it all to Pittsburgh, PA to store it, and flew back to SB to set up temporary camp until we figured out where life would take us next….
The changing face of the future?Since I’ve been back in SB, I’ve spent a good bit of time with three of my high school friends. Lots of grilled meat, threats of going swimming in the cold Pacific Ocean, drinking excessive amounts of coffee, late evening walks around town…. It’s not a party, but it sometimes feels like one….
Having gone to school together, stories from those years of my life inevitably come up whenever we hang out. And I always find it funny that, only ten years later, I’m already looking back on those days with what? Nostalgia? Not really—but I’m not sure what else to call it. My interpretation of nostalgia includes an implication that “things were better back then” and that’s not quite what I feel when I look back to those years. But maybe it’s my habit of telling stories that makes me look back on them the way that I do….
One thing I’ll admit is that, while I like the comfort of routines, I love to experience and acknowledge change. I am not the person I was ten years ago, and I take comfort knowing that.
About eight years ago, I had reconnected with a friend I hadn’t spoken to since my high school graduation—in other words, a mere two years. Our meeting was fun, although I felt it was a bit too much of “Oh my god! This is just like the old times!” After talking to her, I felt quite frustrated, and felt inclined to write a story, Definition, that dealt with that frustration. Re-reading that story is pretty depressing, because there were some things that came as a total surprise to me: my friend had an extremely skewed version of the history we shared, and somewhere in there, she expected us both to be at the same place as we were in high school two years after graduation. I loved my youth, and I really find it hard to use the word “regret” in relation to things I have done, but I also have no desire to be the person I was back then…. He left me a long time ago….
Part 2: “Life is always goodbyes….”
Sometimes it’s hard for me to get back in touch with people who were important to me at some point in my past. I remember leaving Trinidad, and having the hardest time keeping in touch with my father—and I cannot even begin to tell you how much I loved him. And then time passes, and it seems even more difficult to do something as simple as pick up a phone and say hello. Sometimes it feels like it’s even easier to say goodbye and move on….
It reminds me of one of Amy’s grandmother’s sayings: “Life is always goodbyes….” While it’s true that I sometimes feel it’s depressingly true—especially when you aren’t even given the chance to say goodbye—I think that the optimist in me also sees that these goodbyes have hellos accompanying them, like a breath out is paired with a new breath in.
Recently, I was going through some of my stuff that I had left here in SB. I found my junior high school and high school yearbooks, and I found myself feeling that feeling like nostalgia but not quite nostalgia again, and I had the urge to contact an old friend. Actually, it was more than an urge—I felt that for me, it was important. I was looking at someone who meant an incredible amount to me at the end of high-school, and we had somehow been out of contact. And here I am, at a point in my life when I am extremely happy, yet unable to share it with someone I would consider one of my significant friends.
Reestablishing contact was more terrifying than it should have been. I remember thinking about what I should say and wondering if I was going to have to justify the ten-year gap in communication…. I was so happy when a simple email came back to me containing the line that “True friendship can withstand the years of silence, pick up, drop off and be picked up again.” I’ve heard similar things said many times before, but for some reason, that was so good to hear and made it so much easier to pick up the phone and get around to closing the gap of time….
I met my friend a while later, and we mostly sat around and talked. She looked just as I would have pictured her. But unlike the other experience I’ve mentioned, in this case, there was no expectation that our lives would have been stagnant. Instead, I got the feeling that there was a real interest in how we have developed as people. Our past was a great foundation for many of our conversations, but instead of being focused on the past, they wove their way into today, tomorrow, and beyond. And a lot of the past that we talked about was our unshared past, but as I knew my friend, I felt I was somehow a part of it all…. I know it’s awkward to describe, but it just felt natural.
And it was a very nice addition to the finishing touches of my 2005 yearbook….
No related posts.
Yearbook Memories
Part 1: Nostalgia?
This last stretch of time living back in Santa Barbara has been a really nice break. For a while, SB was somewhat dry and dead…. Then came Amy’s acceptance to Harvard, leading us to pack everything we owned into a huge rental truck and drive it across the States to set up new temporary residence in Cambridge, MA. We lived there a while, but once her program was over, we packed everything up again, took it all to Pittsburgh, PA to store it, and flew back to SB to set up temporary camp until we figured out where life would take us next….
The changing face of the future?
Since I’ve been back in SB, I’ve spent a good bit of time with three of my high school friends. Lots of grilled meat, threats of going swimming in the cold Pacific Ocean, drinking excessive amounts of coffee, late evening walks around town…. It’s not a party, but it sometimes feels like one….
Having gone to school together, stories from those years of my life inevitably come up whenever we hang out. And I always find it funny that, only ten years later, I’m already looking back on those days with what? Nostalgia? Not really—but I’m not sure what else to call it. My interpretation of nostalgia includes an implication that “things were better back then” and that’s not quite what I feel when I look back to those years. But maybe it’s my habit of telling stories that makes me look back on them the way that I do….
One thing I’ll admit is that, while I like the comfort of routines, I love to experience and acknowledge change. I am not the person I was ten years ago, and I take comfort knowing that.
About eight years ago, I had reconnected with a friend I hadn’t spoken to since my high school graduation—in other words, a mere two years. Our meeting was fun, although I felt it was a bit too much of “Oh my god! This is just like the old times!” After talking to her, I felt quite frustrated, and felt inclined to write a story, Definition, that dealt with that frustration. Re-reading that story is pretty depressing, because there were some things that came as a total surprise to me: my friend had an extremely skewed version of the history we shared, and somewhere in there, she expected us both to be at the same place as we were in high school two years after graduation. I loved my youth, and I really find it hard to use the word “regret” in relation to things I have done, but I also have no desire to be the person I was back then…. He left me a long time ago….
Part 2: “Life is always goodbyes….”
Sometimes it’s hard for me to get back in touch with people who were important to me at some point in my past. I remember leaving Trinidad, and having the hardest time keeping in touch with my father—and I cannot even begin to tell you how much I loved him. And then time passes, and it seems even more difficult to do something as simple as pick up a phone and say hello. Sometimes it feels like it’s even easier to say goodbye and move on….
It reminds me of one of Amy’s grandmother’s sayings: “Life is always goodbyes….” While it’s true that I sometimes feel it’s depressingly true—especially when you aren’t even given the chance to say goodbye—I think that the optimist in me also sees that these goodbyes have hellos accompanying them, like a breath out is paired with a new breath in.
Recently, I was going through some of my stuff that I had left here in SB. I found my junior high school and high school yearbooks, and I found myself feeling that feeling like nostalgia but not quite nostalgia again, and I had the urge to contact an old friend. Actually, it was more than an urge—I felt that for me, it was important. I was looking at someone who meant an incredible amount to me at the end of high-school, and we had somehow been out of contact. And here I am, at a point in my life when I am extremely happy, yet unable to share it with someone I would consider one of my significant friends.
Reestablishing contact was more terrifying than it should have been. I remember thinking about what I should say and wondering if I was going to have to justify the ten-year gap in communication…. I was so happy when a simple email came back to me containing the line that “True friendship can withstand the years of silence, pick up, drop off and be picked up again.” I’ve heard similar things said many times before, but for some reason, that was so good to hear and made it so much easier to pick up the phone and get around to closing the gap of time….
I met my friend a while later, and we mostly sat around and talked. She looked just as I would have pictured her. But unlike the other experience I’ve mentioned, in this case, there was no expectation that our lives would have been stagnant. Instead, I got the feeling that there was a real interest in how we have developed as people. Our past was a great foundation for many of our conversations, but instead of being focused on the past, they wove their way into today, tomorrow, and beyond. And a lot of the past that we talked about was our unshared past, but as I knew my friend, I felt I was somehow a part of it all…. I know it’s awkward to describe, but it just felt natural.
And it was a very nice addition to the finishing touches of my 2005 yearbook….
No related posts.