My obsession with nostalgia, my love for all that’s past and lost to me forever, started the day I turned ten and realized, with aching heart, that my age would never again be a single digit.
Since then, I’ve mourned the passing of many more ages I will never be again. Still, my brain refuses to acknowledge that I’m a day over 39. Consequently, it was more than a little traumatic when my oldest son turned 39 yesterday. Isn’t that a medical impossibility?
In my dreams, my adult children are always little kids. I long to be with them at five and six again. If I could live my life over, I’d appreciate all the small moments more. Or would I?
I recently read The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky. Ivan suffers agonizing regret about letting alcohol and laziness ruin his life. He’s certain he’d make wiser choices if given a second chance. He meets a magician who enables him to do exactly that. However, despite Ivan’s full knowledge of the catastrophic results of his prior self-indulgence, he makes the same disastrous decisions.
I’d like to believe I’m more self-aware than Ivan but maybe I wouldn’t do it better even if I could do it over. Still, I’d do anything to find out. If Time Travel was an option, I’d be first in line. Unfortunately, despite myriad books and movies suggesting time travel might be real and imminent in my lifetime, my husband informs me due to, uh, reality, it will in fact never be possible in anybody’s lifetime. This is a major disappointment.
In order to preserve as much of the past as possible, I’ve filled hundreds of journals with diary entries dating back to 1963. I’ll share some less humiliating entries on my domain next year. I’m traveling over Christmas, so this is probably my last blog in 2015 (say goodbye to another opportunity, forever lost) – but I wish anyone who’s read this far a happy holiday and spectacular New Year.
