Yesterday's memories are today's foundation for courage and persistence

The news these days is like a multilateral car crash that I do not want to watch but cannot stop myself from being witness to. 

When I do turn away, I tune into a feeling that transports me to simpler times — a mix of wistful, mournful longing for days gone by. 

Living in that feeling is not productive, but the occasional visit to it is, I think, not harmful; I find it restorative. 

Nostalgia in three scenes: Visiting the past to tackle today

A summer day, July 1974, near Banbury, England — My friend Lesley and I somehow wangled permission from our mothers to pack a picnic lunch, get on our bikes and head off for a day-long adult-free adventure in the country. I remember only one thing in any detail but remember it I do: the exhilarating sense of freedom that came from being on our own (just 14 years old), guiding ourselves through the countryside, enjoying the hours of the day, peddling like mad and loving every minute. I remember nothing beyond that. (Nothing bad can have happened or I would remember it quite differently.) This one singular day during that summer’s school holiday remains in my mind the very essence of childhood innocence and peace. We were entirely free to simply be, out in the world, ourselves, roaming... 

Saturday mornings, maybe 1981, Uncle Al’s Diner, Edmonton, Alberta — in the university district, just off Whyte Avenue. The place to go to start the weekend with eggs and bacon and toast, and coffee in those thick white diner mugs, after the previous evening ending the week with cheap beer or red wine. We knew nothing back then. We knew everything back then. We had little money but, really, everything we needed: friends who shaped our lives, studies that would give us a future, faith that the world, while far from perfect, would hold us for a life worth living. We talked politics, culture and philosophy. We probably gossiped, but we definitely didn’t mention that some of the women were sleeping with each other. Maybe everyone knew. No one said a word. As my feminist politics grew, so did my courage and my confidence. But back then, on those Saturday mornings, over an affordable greasy-diner breakfast, it was enough to be part of a group of young women and men setting the pins of their lives with connection and conversation...

Another summer day, this time an afternoon in August 2010, with my parents at the cottage — the kind of afternoon when time drifts, the sun is warm, the sky is blue, and the people are present to each other in quiet harmony. Meals are made, conversation comes and goes, walks are taken, books are read, companionship is simply enjoyed. Idyllic. Peaceful. Taken for granted in the moment, cherished. Today, remembered for the perfect time it was...

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Nostalgia has a place in our life, acting like a safety net when today’s harsh news and truths are just too much — the wars, the loss, the sorrows, the pain…I don’t think it hurts to revisit those moments from our past that remind us of gentler times, of easier times. They can refresh and reboot us to go once more unto the breach, to look today, this day, right in the face and remember — I have that sense of freedom, those connections, this peace — all that is deep within me. I can do this.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Oxfordshire Photo by Simon Godfrey on Unsplash

Diner Photo by Hans Vivek on Unsplash