Nostalgic Mother Confession #1

Blame it on the iron pills (=energy to leave the house easily with the two progeny in tow!) or the huge Vitamin C doses since that Newman's Lemonade went on sale, but I have been having vivid dreams: of Lena walking, old friends. Only, I most often dream of the good friends I've lost touch with. That is why I consider myself:

Nostalgic. Capital N.

I am the sort to be so in-the-moment mentally that when a period of my life ends, it ambushes me. And I take such comfort in friends that often these life periods are less marked by years of school or jobs, etc., than the group of people that helped me while away that specific time.

I most often dream of the friends with which I've lost touch, especially Katharine and Victoria: my best friend of later high school and her precocious sister, both from an odd but equally precocious family. Katharine stopped being in touch after a few months of art school. Some said she was shrugging off her past. My unconscious is still trying to repair that rift. Last night I dreamt again of Victoria, and she lived not too far from here, in Verona, in a small ranch house that was far too crowded with people and things.

My friend L's blog struck me as nostalgic last week, and nostalgia is so often taken as sadness, but I find it a rich emotion. The tone of it, and all these dreams, inspired me.

I am nostalgic for all sorts of times and places and people, most recently our time in Jersey City with young Ella and Hamilton Park and her/our/my friends. Luckily, we are still in touch with the most dear. New and old friends can make for such a rich mixture, and when they meet, they are so often found enjoying each other's company. It is a slower process for me to make new friends, because I find I have all sorts of antennae at work. Mostly, a new friend should inspire me. Why settle for less? There is staying power in this: otherwise, the getting and drifting of friends is too much work for me. Part of life, yes--we are always more drawn to people who are experiencing the same life circumstances at any given time--but I have always felt that if people stay essentially the same through their lives, why not a longevity as friends?

I am not nostalgic to return to the past, but to fully appraise it and, yes, even sentimentalize it a bit, so that it turns from immediacy into story. Into our story. Of how we grew.