Nostalgia
God only knows what I’d be without you (to the tune of the Beach Boys song)
I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia, and what it means to long for feelings or moments from my past. Does the longing to feel those moments again shows that I’m ready to heal from them? If I could only go back to those raw and vulnerable places and get to feel it all over again, maybe I would do it better. Maybe I would learn something more. Maybe it’s just the feeling of feeling [sad, lonely, heartbroken] that I miss. Life is sweet and steady these days, and yet I am still nostalgic for when it wasn’t.
I took myself on a field trip of what I miss, in honor of my dad who can only be visited through such field trips. Sometimes to visit with dad I scroll deep into his Facebook and Instagram photos of his life on the water, I read the comments, I remind myself that I was growing up while he was away. He would come back into our lives for 2 Wednesdays and 2 weekends per month for most of my life, as I remember it. To live two lives was something that I did, not something that was especially easy, and I’m nostalgic for my own half of my self that I’ve lost.
In middle school on the Wednesdays when he wasn’t on the tugboat my dad would pick us up in a dark gray Ford Aerostar van (stock image for reference on the left, actual pictured on the right), bumper stickers and all. I remember being mortified. Picture the girl in the photo on the right. This was the age of fitting in: it felt crucial that my mom was able to take me to the Bangor Mall to buy an Aeropostale T-shirt, and it was detrimental to the identity I was building at age 12 when my dad showed up in this van, honking and showing that he had a personality larger this life itself. I wish I could have grown up feeling accepting of and excited for however my dad picked us up from school — or that I had a dad who was that excited to pick us up from school, period.
The worlds were hard to go between. On a Wednesday one week I was walking back to my mom’s house from middle school, hanging out with friends downtown, having dinner in our renovated 1800s downtown Camden home, my stepdad helping me with my math or history homework. The next Wednesday I was picked up in dad’s ‘sexy surf van’, visiting with his current girlfriend or playing for hours at Walker Park, and for dinner eating dad burritos in a parking lot: refried beans, lettuce, cheese, salsa, wrap. He had no idea what we were up to in school but he was so proud of us it didn’t matter. With dad we had fun.
I remember beginning to recognize the difference between my worlds. I felt sad for dad and worried about him when I was at mom’s. It was hard to understand to which I belonged to. I’m wistful for this time when I wasn’t ready to accept my own self. We are but a make up of our parents, and this was mine.
What I would give to show him how much of himself I see in me, how sorry I am to have missed out on fully accepting who he was, and how much I would give to be picked up from grad school in the Ford Aerostar today.
During this time, living two lives between Mom’s in Camden and dad’s in Harpswell/ Rockland/ Belfast/ all the other places he lived and people we stayed with, Tucker was my best friend. We navigated these worlds together, we did everything together. He was silly, always a nuisance, but he believed in me. I miss the days when he was younger brother, before he grew up without a dad at 18 and learned too much about a patriarchal society where one day he would think it was his job to be in charge of who I was becoming. Losing our life with dad came at a time when he really needed it.
Our life with dad was nothing short of an adventure. I miss being on the water, setting aside a week in August to go island hopping in Casco Bay aboard dad’s fiberglass sailboat. I miss when things were good, when my stepmom would make chicken salad and come up from the galley with our favorite butterfly crackers and gouda, instead of blockading us from our dad’s t shirts and photo albums. Nostalgia can be a bitch when you know what’s coming.
One thing about dad is that he loved college. He never got to go to college himself, but he loved driving up to Colby for a hockey game, a walk along the Kennebec, a visit with my friends, a coffee and a wander through the art museum. I began to look forward to his visits. One time after a hockey game he stole a Colby hockey road sign and couldn’t wait to get back to Brunswick so he could plant it on Bowdoin’s campus. I was beginning to appreciate his eccentricities, too, and no longer felt the same mortification when he would parade around campus in his satchel bag, saying hi to everyone he met. He loved my friends and made a point of commenting on everyone’s instagram posts while he was on the tugboat.
I’m sure dad being sick helped me be gentle with him. Once I was at college, which should be noted was equidistant form Camden and Harpswell, I no longer felt the chasm between worlds. College taught me a lot, but the most important being that I was a product of these lives I had lived, and perhaps they were not separate, but a single entity known as Willow. I was glad to have these visits with him, in a place that wasn’t mom’s or dad’s but mine, and be able to invite him into the life I was creating for myself. I wish that Tucker was able to experience dad’s visits too, but dad got sick and Rhode Island was a lot farther than central Maine.
I didn’t know it then, but now I even miss my depressing solo dorm room in Australia. It held me during the most heartbreaking few months of my life. It was mine, and I felt so many feelings. I thought I was mourning my dad’s death, a college relationship, and being so far from everyone and everything I knew, but what I didn’t realize during this time was that I was also mourning the loss of a whole half of my life. My life with my dad would never exist again, just as coming back from Australia would mean I would never get a visit, a phone call, an instagram comment from him again.
I spent so much time alone in my solo dorm room. Not only was I far away from the US, where my dad was dying, my brother was at college, and my mom in Camden, but I was alone in my dorm room. It was there with my desk and twin bed and suitcase of summer clothes that I grew into exactly the person I am today, integrating all of my experiences of love and loss and life and grief, in this dorm room and in this space. Of course I miss it. I miss feeling this all so intensely, so closely. That solo dorm room held me when no one else could.
My dad died 7 years ago today, and I can now more vividly conjure the delight of my life with him than I can the grief that struck me in the days and months and years after he died. Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations, and I have finally overcome the immediate grip of sadness and heartbreak when I think of dad and my life with dad. I long for the Aerostar, the gouda crackers, the comments on instagram.
I’m both nostalgic for a time when my grief was more raw, real, and nearby than what I feel today, and appreciative that what I feel this year is calm, filled with love and fullness of a life I once had and that will forever be mine. What I feel today shows me that time heals all wounds, and grief does integrate and soften into wisdom and love. This year I try to remind myself that just because I don’t feel as intensely sad or at loss as I have in the past it doesn’t mean I don’t still feel.
I might have never gotten the chance to invite dad up to Orono for walks along the Penobscot or to go to a UMaine hockey game, but I know he loves it here. It’s the beauty of a past life integrated into today; it’s the sad sweet honest grief that makes the spot in your throat verklempt with happiness of knowing such a life was lived.
vulnerable and beautiful as always <3
Really beautiful stuff Willow! Stoked to learn you're on here and really admire the writing. Hope to get you guys out on Holiday this summer!