I've been noticing that nostalgia has been creeping up on me. I've written a lot about homesickness and the longing for things that are familiar - but nostalgia is different. It isn't something that makes you want to shed a tear or look at flights back home (yes, I have admittedly done that once or twice)... It's more a feeling that causes you to sigh, smile, and be pulled back into a memory from the past:
Today I woke up a little unsure of where I was. It happens. I wake up in my French bedroom and suddenly have to remember that I'm not waking up to go to Laguna Beach High School, I'm waking up to go to SYA. I make my own breakfast here - my host mom wakes up way later than I do, so I begin to feel a little nostalgia remembering the mornings I could just walk out to the kitchen and have a gourmet meal sitting on the counter top. Instead of a gourmet meal, I put some sliched brioche into the toaster, smell it burning as I prepare my coffee, and forgo the brioche for a slice of baguette. I butter the toast and put some jam on it, and kind of wish my mom was flittering around the kitchen making me an omlette. Nostalgia.
On my walk to school I pass a high school, a middle school, an elementary school, and a pre school. I feel nostalgic as I watch kids getting out of their parents cars, calling goodbyes to them, giving their parents hugs and kisses. It reminds me of my elementary school days. Nostalgia.
After school, I feel a little hungry, so I wander over to the Carrefour accross from school. I pass the cookie isle and spot the red plaid box from 15 feet away: Walkers Pure Butter Shortbread Fingers. I'm not supposed to be eating anything with milk, sugar, or eggs, but I snatch the box and carry it along with me to the personal hygeine isle where I grab some floss. The girl who's at Carrefour everyday scans my items, asks me if I have a Carrefour card even though she knows I don't, and I walk out of the store. On my walk home I open the package, excited to take a bite of something that I haven't eaten in so long. As soon as I put the smooth, buttery shortbread in my mouth (sorry, stomach) I'm taken back to the summers of my middle school days. I see the Via Burrone house in my mind; the pool, the giant grey couch, our old dog Teddy. I think of the smell of barbeque, and the quiet warning to stop eating because dinner's in a few minutes. I'm hungry though, and so is Juliet, so we wander into the pantry. 4 boxes of Walkers Pure Butter Shortbread Fingers sit on the shelf, and we crack into them, our fingers pruney from the pool water, our hair dripping. The memory causes me to smile, and I feel a longing to return back to the simplicity of those summers.
Nostalgia catches me off guard often, and I almost like it. If you have memories that pull at your heart strings and make you wish you could go back and be in the moment, you're lucky. You've had a good life with good memories and good people.
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