“Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in
Greek, nostalgia literally means 'the pain from an old wound.’ It's
a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.”
--Don Draper in a “Mad Men” episode titled “The Wheel”, 2007.
A few weeks ago my wife and I were
recalling the events we experienced this past summer, two major trips, two
50-year high school reunions and a major concert that was fantastic. “It
certainly was a summer for nostalgia,” she said.
Yes, it was and I have been thinking
about how to write about that. I could take the chronological approach, but
that’s too easy and it might sound a lot like a Rick Steves travelogue. Or it
could end up sounding like the “What I did last summer” essay—an assignment
many of us dreaded at the beginning of the school year.
This summer we saw a lot of
wonderful sites and reunited with old friends and family. But, as I look back,
I realize the trips and reunions were mostly about rekindling memories both
good and bad—thus, nostalgia.
The Reunion
Let’s start with my 50-year high school
reunion. There was the delight of seeing classmates that I really liked in high
school and rekindling those friendships for just a moment half a century later.
But, there was also some pain remembering classmates who had passed away or who
couldn’t attend because of illness.
At my reunion there was a display
of photos of the 24 classmates who had passed away. One of them, only a couple
of weeks before the reunion. I looked at some of the photos and remembered happier
times and then felt sad for the loss I felt along with their loved ones
felt—nostalgia.
It's Only Been 56 Years
A few weeks later, Pam and I had
dinner with my cousin Kevin at a very nice restaurant on a hillside overlooking
the Pacific Ocean in LaJolla, near San Diego. He once lived in Macedonia, Ohio—about
15 minutes from where I live now. His parents divorced when he was 12 and his
mom (my dad’s sister) moved to Florida.
Kevin ended up going to college in
Texas and then medical school in Utah where he met his wife and they had a
daughter. They eventually divorced and Kevin is now a professor at the medical
school at UC San Diego.
We had not seen each other since
1960 and we had a lot of catching up to do.
We reminisced about our visits to
his childhood home, living in Ohio versus California and family members still
alive and ones passed. He talked about visiting his birth father’s grave on a
trip to Ohio. The visit was a mixture of good memories and pain—nostalgia.
The California Couple
One of Pam’s childhood friends
lives in Camarillo, Calif., about 45 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. When I
was dating Pam, we went out with Carol and her date a couple of times and I
always liked her. She was a flight attendant for a few years and eventually met
her current husband John and moved to SoCal.
John is a vibrant, likable guy who
was manufacturers rep for a men’s clothing company for a number of years. But,
he contracted a very rare disease that affected his circulation and has since
lost both feet and several fingers. He is now wheelchair bound, but he is able
to get around driving a specially-equipped van. We had a great time visiting
Ventura Beach one afternoon.
After lunch, while Pam and Carol
went shopping, John and I talked over coffee on a patio overlooking the marina.
He told me he was a student at Kent State University when the Ohio National
Guard fired the shots that killed four students on May 4, 1970. He was walking
between classes and saw one of the victims fall about 20 feet in front of him.
He said he dove under a nearby car and didn’t move for about an hour. The mood
of a pleasant conversation had suddenly turned somber—nostalgia.
After returning from the west
coast, we went to a concert at the “Q” Arena in Cleveland. Paul McCartney put
on a phenomenal show that lasted almost three hours in front of a sellout
crowd. There was no intermission and the 74-year old Sir Paul never left the
stage. It was so great to hear the old favorites and one thing I’ll remember
most is the enthusiastic audience signing along with many of the songs. But
there were a couple of somber moments when he talked about the two Beatles now
passed and performed songs identified with each one.
Pam and I had tickets to see Sir
Paul in 1978 at the Richfield Coliseum, but we could not attend and I had to
sell them to a co-worker. She was in graduate school and her prof scheduled a
mid-term exam that night and she didn’t want to ask him if she could take the
test another time.
So, there was the pain of missing
that concert and the delight of seeing McCartney 38 years later. His music
defined my high school and college years and it’s a little sad to think those
years have passed—nostalgia.
Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy.
Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fear...
--Simon and Garfunkel song “Old Friends”, 1968.
It was quite a summer.
It was quite a summer.
