Nostalgia

Every so often, I get nostalgic. The past week and a half I have been very nostalgic. This didn’t happen all on its own; it was self-inflicted. Last Saturday I was sorting through a shoe box full of cards, photos, letters, all sort of stuff from the not so distant past that was guaranteed to trigger an acute case of nostalgia.

This triggered a monumental bout of introspection which lasted the majority of the weekend. I think one of the reasons we start to get nostalgic is because we start to wonder whether things were better in the past than they are in the present. For example, the photos made me wonder if I have dramatically changed. And, if I have, is this a change for the good or the bad? Obviously the goal with photos is to have not changed a bit.

The cards and letters that I uncovered had messages inside. Some of the message explicitly stated qualities that the sender had seen in me which I didn’t realise I had. This made me wonder if I still have those qualities that people had seen in me or, as I was taken aback by the suggested traits from many moons ago, that I had lost these qualities and wouldn’t be able to regain them.

A trip down memory lane never stops with a few years previously but for me continues on right back to childhood; when I didn’t realise how easy life was when you don’t have to work and fend for yourself in the big bad world.

A lot of my childhood memories involve my brother. My relationship with my brother is one of the longest relationships I have ever had. There is no one else who has known me longer than him. Some of the memories of us make me smile and others laugh. But the memories aren’t always positive.

One of the most memorable times I can recall was when my brother and I were playing cricket in the back garden one summer. We had a rule that if you hit the ball over into any of the next door neighbours’ gardens you were deemed to have scored six runs but you were also out.

This particular day I was intent on making sure that I completely annihilated my brother by clocking up as many runs as possible and then bowling him out very quickly. Very soon I scoring runs left, right and centre but then I made the mistake of smashing the ball over the neighbours’ fence. My brother was ready to take the bat off me because of the rule that we had agreed before. I flatly refused and said I won’t take the six runs but I’ll still be in.

My brother took particular offence to the idea of my refusal to vacate the crease and promptly picked up one of the cricket wickets and threw it in anger at my shin. To this day I can still see the look of utter anger in his face. It was a look that I can only imagine a murder would have on his face moments before a frenzied knife attack on his victim. He was almost foaming at the mouth as he drew back his arm to gain the momentum to throw the wicket at me. From the second he let go, everything became slow motion until the second the piece of wood struck my shin. Pain? I’ve never felt pain like it before or since.

You would think that the competitive nature of our relationship would mean that all sporting activity would be off limits. Not so. We have started playing squash once a week and I have learnt my lesson so I stick to the rules. Not because my competitive streak has faded but because I don’t think a squash racket wrapped around my face would be helpful.

I found out this week that it wasn’t just my brother who was mean to be during childhood. One of my friends declined a hot cross bun from me yesterday, stating that he can’t eat anything with currants in because his younger brother once told him that they were dead bees.

Ok, my brother caused me physical pain but bruises and scratches heal with time. At least he didn’t tell me currants were the corpses of insects. Imagine life without hot cross buns, tea cakes and Eccles cakes. Plus, bread and butter pudding would basically be stale bread with some milk splashed on top of it. It’s enough to make you lose your appetite.

Baz Luhrmann’s song Everyone’s Free to Wear Sunscreen is a favourite of mine. In it is the lyric “Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future”.

I sometimes wish that this song was released while I was growing up rather than in my late-teens; it may have saved me some injuries my brother inflicted on me! (The cricket wicket wasn't an isolated incident - there was the time he pushed me through a window and the time he burst the blisters on my arms on holiday)

Dead bees and cricket wickets aside, I can honestly say without hesitation or reservation, that my link to my past makes me happier than it does sad and long may it continue into the future.