Nostalgia

The week between Christmas and the New Year was spent in New Mexico with our families.  Before we arrived they received quite a bit of snow "like the old days" according to my friends and family there.  It snowed twice while we were there, beautiful soft, quiet snows.  Being there with that kind of snow coming down I feel nostalgic.

It did make it hard to run.  The first day I needed to run I was able to do so on some roads rarely travled and somewhat clear of ice and snow.  But the second day my plan called for running was after the last large snow fall and was a bit more difficult.

I started out on the walking/biking path that circles a golf course.  I thought that perhaps they would have plowed the path, alas I was incorrect! The path had been used despite the ice under the snow but it only made it packed with hard little balls of snow and ice.  This hurt my feet terribly!  And so I ran 3 miles on this surface.  This path happens to be very close to the neighborhood I grew up in so I made the decision to take off for my old house and see what the neighborhood looks like now.  Of course the roads are not main roads and so they too had not been plowed but were also packed from traffic and made it a bit easier to run.

As I came up on the house of my childhood the nostalgia flooded through me. I remember those days of climbing trees, riding horses over the hills,  spying on the adults from my perch high up, days sleeping in the yard under the willow tree, the endless hours I spent outside in that yard and in the forest next door.  Of course it has changed so much, there is no more forest as the houses have sprung up and that makes me sad.

I circle around the street to where my grandparents house was and there it stands. It doesn't look much different.  Again the feeling is overwhelming, joy, sadness, wonder.  There was a small forest group of lots between our house and theirs with a path we had beaten into the dirt from going back and forth.  Now houses sit right in the middle.  I remember going back and forth in the dark and being sure some kind of scary creature was going to jump out from behind the trees to eat me alive.  I remember the signal my grandmother gave for when we were not allowed to come over, typically when she and her friends were playing bridge and having cocktails!  If the curtains were pulled she was entertaining, if they were open we were to come on over.

After stopping for a bit I go on around the area, running on the streets where I used to ride bikes for hours on end, up and down the hills with no thought of fear of traffic or of someone snatching me.  From morning until way after dark we would ride and explore the series of streets. 

Sometimes I wonder if nostalgia is a bad thing, for me it always leads to a series of "what if" questions.  This day the questions centered around my parents.  "What if they had not moved from this house while I was in college", "Would they have stayed together?".  "What if they had not divorced?"  "If they had not what would they be like as grandparents together?" "What would our holiday be like if they had toughed it out? Would it be happy and fun or sad and tense?" "How would my relationship with Terry and my children be different had they stayed together?"  See, the house where I grew up symbolizes the good times in my family, it was after they moved that it fell apart.  I was already married when they divorced and sometimes I feel I've never had the opportunity to really grieve over the loss.  When I go by our home the sense of sadness is overwhelming, yet it's good to remember the love that was there and the fun we had together before things turned in the wrong direction.  We really cannot go back can we?  Only forward.  For me that means making my marriage and my relationship with my children happy, loving, trustworthy, and lasting. 

What does all of this have to do with running?  Well running allows these thoughts to ebb in and out of my head, it allows my heart to hurt and to be lite, it allows the feelings to flood in without someone there to see the affect it has on me. 

And so for the New Year my resolution is to make this year with my family the very best year we've had so far in our time together.  We will be adding two to our lives this year as our children get married.  I want them to remember us as a happy loving family. 

Happy New Year