The Meaning of Nostalgia: Trying to Find My Way Home Again
Tue 13 Dec 2011 06:54:12 | 1 comments
I met a guy named Neil a couple weeks back. He decorates people’s homes for the holidays and will do anything you want, create any theme—Victorian, Modern, Neo-classic. For a price, he will create any image you’d like. He’ll bring in the greenery, the lights and sparkle, clean up after himself and even come back after the holidays to take it all down.
It sounded great. Finally someone to take the burden of Christmas decorating off my shoulders. All the work, all the mess, all the hassle. Sometimes decorating takes the entire weekend and more often then not, I never feel I did a good enough job anyway. What I attempt never looks like the magazines.
Neil was my chance to get it out of the way and done. Neil was my chance for perfection.
We set an appointment.
The day before Neil came over, I brought up from the basement my boxes of ornaments. Neil wanted to look through them and see what might fit in the theme he would choose for me. I took a minute to go through them and eliminate the ones that were ugly, broken and too old.
When I opened the first box, there lying on top was a red Power Ranger Action figure ornament with its crooked legs and its right foot chewed flat. We gave it to Tommy when he was 4--when every waking hour was consumed with the Rangers and he told everyone he wanted to be the red Power Ranger when he grew up. A few years ago, when we were decorating the tree, he turned his nose up at that ornament, putting it back in the box, refusing to let me put it up. But I did anyway—in the back, where he couldn’t see it. But I knew it was there, representing Tommy’s growth from Power Rangers to crushes on girls, long division and his driver's license.
In that same box were six silver ball ornaments, one which was broken and wrapped loosely in wrinkled, yellowed tissue paper. It was the ornament I dropped when decorating the tree with my dad on that Christmas that turned out to be his last. He loved these ornaments that were his mother’s. Each year I’d complain that they looked too old fashioned, worn out and mottled, with so much of the silver coating lying loose on the bottom of each ornament. But every year he’d insist those silver balls would go on, as he told me the same story of walking to the 5 & Dime with his mother to buy them when he knew she couldn’t afford them. It was the middle of the Depression and his mom bought them because it meant a lot to him to have something hanging on the tree, he told me.
“These ornaments and a tangerine in my stocking were the only presents I got that year,” my dad said. He told me it was his favorite memory and the best Christmas of his childhood. (The reason, I realized, there was a tangerine tucked in the bottom of my stocking every Christmas morning.)
I still remember my dad’s expression when I dropped one of his precious ornaments and how he stopped me when I tried to throw the broken pieces away. He told me it was all right, but that we should keep it to remember our time together. As he wrapped it carefully in the tissue paper, he told me that even broken, the ornament still meant a lot to him.
So I did keep it, moving it from his house to mine after he died, making sure I kept the pieces together, as though one missing fragment would take away a chunk of my memory—of him teaching me how to slow down long enough to appreciate the taste of fresh chocolate pudding and the nuances of Frank Sinatra’s voice. When families are fragmented and parents are gone, traditions, rituals and yes, even silver ornaments are markers that give us continuity when everything else might not make sense.
This broken, silver ornament was our last Christmas together. Holding it, I realized this wouldn’t be the Christmas I handed over the decorating to someone else. I called Neil to cancel our appointment.
When I was young, I spent a lot of time dreaming about how to get out of my house. I longed for a richer, more complex existence—with skyscrapers, corner coffee shops filled with people discussing heady topics and men in tortoiseshell glasses who readHenry James on the subway.
The day before Neil came over, I brought up from the basement my boxes of ornaments. Neil wanted to look through them and see what might fit in the theme he would choose for me. I took a minute to go through them and eliminate the ones that were ugly, broken and too old.
When I opened the first box, there lying on top was a red Power Ranger Action figure ornament with its crooked legs and its right foot chewed flat. We gave it to Tommy when he was 4--when every waking hour was consumed with the Rangers and he told everyone he wanted to be the red Power Ranger when he grew up. A few years ago, when we were decorating the tree, he turned his nose up at that ornament, putting it back in the box, refusing to let me put it up. But I did anyway—in the back, where he couldn’t see it. But I knew it was there, representing Tommy’s growth from Power Rangers to crushes on girls, long division and his driver's license.
In that same box were six silver ball ornaments, one which was broken and wrapped loosely in wrinkled, yellowed tissue paper. It was the ornament I dropped when decorating the tree with my dad on that Christmas that turned out to be his last. He loved these ornaments that were his mother’s. Each year I’d complain that they looked too old fashioned, worn out and mottled, with so much of the silver coating lying loose on the bottom of each ornament. But every year he’d insist those silver balls would go on, as he told me the same story of walking to the 5 & Dime with his mother to buy them when he knew she couldn’t afford them. It was the middle of the Depression and his mom bought them because it meant a lot to him to have something hanging on the tree, he told me.
“These ornaments and a tangerine in my stocking were the only presents I got that year,” my dad said. He told me it was his favorite memory and the best Christmas of his childhood. (The reason, I realized, there was a tangerine tucked in the bottom of my stocking every Christmas morning.)
I still remember my dad’s expression when I dropped one of his precious ornaments and how he stopped me when I tried to throw the broken pieces away. He told me it was all right, but that we should keep it to remember our time together. As he wrapped it carefully in the tissue paper, he told me that even broken, the ornament still meant a lot to him.
So I did keep it, moving it from his house to mine after he died, making sure I kept the pieces together, as though one missing fragment would take away a chunk of my memory—of him teaching me how to slow down long enough to appreciate the taste of fresh chocolate pudding and the nuances of Frank Sinatra’s voice. When families are fragmented and parents are gone, traditions, rituals and yes, even silver ornaments are markers that give us continuity when everything else might not make sense.
This broken, silver ornament was our last Christmas together. Holding it, I realized this wouldn’t be the Christmas I handed over the decorating to someone else. I called Neil to cancel our appointment.
When I was young, I spent a lot of time dreaming about how to get out of my house. I longed for a richer, more complex existence—with skyscrapers, corner coffee shops filled with people discussing heady topics and men in tortoiseshell glasses who read
At 18, I finally got my wish as I headed off to school and then a job in Washington, D.C. But ever since I slammed the door of childhood behind me, I’ve been trying to go back home again.
And every Christmas, that’s exactly where I go.
And Neil might not understand.
And every Christmas, that’s exactly where I go.
And Neil might not understand.
Diana Keough is a Pulitzer-prize nominated journalist, the mother of four boys and CEO, Co-Founder, Editor-In-Chief of ShareWIK.com.
©2011 ShareWIK Media Group, LLC.
©2011 ShareWIK Media Group, LLC. All rights reserved. ShareWIK does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or
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