I'm not sure when it started but I think it was well before I turned 50 - nostalgia began to color my remembrances. So different than when I as younger and would look back on my, then, short life, turning my nose up at younger me, so certain I had come so far, being so much older and wiser. But over the last decade or so nostalgia's warm sepia has replaced the stark lens through which I look back on my life. I know I often wondered what had become of my first true love, who I dated in high school, some of college and then post-college until I realized we wanted different things from life. The last time I'd seen him was post-breakup, as he was driving by me standing in line outside of the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, waiting to get into a Ramones show. Then he was forever gone. I remember hearing he'd met someone and was dating but I slowly lost touch with anyone we'd had in common until, finally, I could only imagine he'd married and started a family, probably close to where we grew up. I guess most of us get nostalgic as we age. I remember one time my dad was in New Jersey on business from Texas after I'd moved back to the Garden State. We visited Spring Lake and, as we stood on the boardwalk looking out at the ocean, he got misty recalling an old summer fling he'd had there when he was a teen. I was in my 20s and he near 60. I can still see him, standing next to me in the twilight, disappear into a memory. He was right there, but he wasn't. I think now I can almost see where he'd gone. Facebook has certainly had an impact on the nostalgic waxings of my advancing years. For starters, it helped me reconnect with my old beau, through his little brother, as my former bf is not a Facebook kind of guy. (Don't worry, my husband knows all about our correspondence, which is only fair as I seem to run into one of his old girlfriends whenever we visit his home town). It's nice to hear he did find the right girl for him and has raised two sons...fairly close to where we grew up. Otherwise, Facebook helped me reconnect with old high school classmates so I could attend my 35th reunion - the first one I'd ever attended! And, thanks to the soft lens of nostalgia, I think we've all chosen to befriend one another in ways the angst of our youth did not allow. Oh! And I've reconnected with my long-lost best friend, meeting her husband and watching her daughter marry through Facebook photos. I know 20-something me would probably scoff at my softhearted reconnection with my youth. But I don't care. She didn't have a lengthy past about which to be nostalgic, just decades of adventure laid out ahead of her. And no clue about how interesting all that adventure would look in the rearview mirror, through the wiser eyes of one who now knows where life's potholes are. And can better enjoy the journey ahead by driving around them.
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d.a.meek
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December 2017
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