Twenty-one years ago, in August 2005, my family gathered to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We stayed in Pacific Grove, California, very near where my parents had honeymooned in Carmel in 1955. My parents, my husband and I, and my sister and her family made the trip. My brother and his family couldn’t come. They had a baby due any day, and that trumped my parents’ anniversary, even their 50th.
I wrote about that trip four years ago, comparing it with trips I had taken to the same area as a child. In this post, I am revisiting the trip by looking at how much has changed in the 21 years since that vacation.
In 2005, my mother had not yet been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Now, both my parents have been gone for more than a decade. My husband still had almost ten years before he would be diagnosed with Parkinson’s. My sister’s younger daughter, who was just a child then, will be married in a month. My husband and I have moved twice. We are now grandparents. And I am shocked to realize that in a little more than a year, we will celebrate our own 50th wedding anniversary.
The people we were then have been changed by more than two decades of life, with all its gains and losses, joys and sorrows.
And yet, when I look at the photographs, I can put myself back in that week.
There is a photograph of an otter floating in the Pacific, an abalone balanced on its belly. I remember watching it swim, utterly absorbed in its meal. I don’t know if it saw us or not, but it certainly didn’t care about our presence.
I remember sitting in the little gazebo on the point and watching the sun sink beyond the Pacific. It was a beautiful evening, and we all slowed down enough to notice.
One day, my husband and I hiked in Big Sur. At the time, he was far faster, stronger, and sturdier than I was. I had to work to keep up with him, never imagining that there would come a time when a hike like that would be a struggle for him—or that I would be the one who could keep going.
And I remember visiting San Juan Bautista with my parents. They were a few years older than I am now, but they were active, and I did not think of them as old.
At the time, it was simply a family trip to celebrate a momentous anniversary. Looking back now, it feels like a time capsule. The photographs open a door to the past, and I can return to those moments. I can sit in that gazebo again, watch the otter float on its back, and feel the heat of hiking in Big Sur. Twenty-one years have changed so much. But for a few minutes, I am back in August 2005, seeing it through the lens of today.
Merriam-Webster defines nostalgia as “a sad pleasure experienced in recalling what no longer exists; a wistful or sentimental yearning for a return to or the return of some real or romanticized past period or some irrecoverable past condition or setting.”
For me, nostalgia is seeing the past differently because we know what came afterward. We value those moments more because we now know how fleeting they were. I don’t necessarily yearn to return to the past, because the years in between have brought blessings. But I do miss the joys of those fleeting moments.
When have you felt nostalgic about a moment from your past?
Discover more from Theresa Hupp Author
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
