While clearing out the garden one overcast Sunday afternoon, I was stopped in my tracks by the smells on the wind: dead leaves, fruit that should have been picked weeks ago, chimney smoke. I was jolted back to my childhood, pulled into a vivid memory of my 12-year-old-self walking back from school, kicking leaves. I saw myself watching an episode ofBlue Peter while I waited for my tea, as the presenters Caron Keating and Janet Ellis prepared their garden for winter.
So strong was this visiting memory that I stood still so I could swim in it. As soon as this tender and wistful feeling passed, it was replaced by a sense of longing for a time of simplicity; when life resembled a simple mathematical equation and not the complicated algebra of adulthood. The memory, ignited by smell, was comforting and yet I felt a slight piercing of my heart.
Standing in the middle of the garden watching my cat, Blackberry, jump into the pyramid of leaves I had neatly raked, the 20-second reel of my childhood floated away wth the chimney smoke. And I wondered whether nostalgia was a pointless indulgence serving no purpose other than lulling me into a place that felt safe only then to remind me that it no longer existed.
Nostalgia is something of a Pushmi-Pullyu, pronounced “push-me—pull-you”, the two-headed fictional animal from Doctor Dolittle. Just as the animal faces two opposite sides, nostalgia pulls in two directions; a mixture of pleasure and pain. As if mimicking my emotions, the wind picked up and the trees started making shadows. I felt slightly perturbed that, for a few seconds, something distant felt within reach and palpable. And its evaporation felt personal and hurtful.
There’s a Welsh word that doesn’t translate very well into English, hiraeth. It means longing, yearning, a type of homesickness; a blend of grief, comfort and connection. I was made aware of this word when I came to live in Wales seven years ago and thought it was beautiful.
Perhaps the finite flashes of the past are more than just pointless sentimental indulgences? Perhaps the purpose of nostalgia is to remind us of the importance of ordinariness. The scenes that return to me on gloomy autumn afternoons are moments that, at the time of their occurrence, would never have struck me as potentially memorable; a dance floor full of university friends, a rainy day spent baking a cake with an aunt; collecting leaves on my walk home from school. I hardly ever feel nostalgic about the time I went to the BRIT Awards or the Baftas or other events that actually felt momentous at the time. Those memories do not sit in my heart.
Although nostalgia inherently involves the past—I believe its role is actually to inform the future. It shows us what parts of life are of real value, especially those that might seem mundane or everyday.
As I finished the gardening and put away my tools I understood that, like Dolittle’s Pushmi-Pullyu, nostalgia is a two-headed beast; it looks at the past and the future. I found some comfort in realising that we never really leave the things that matter behind. At times, the past is very much the present.
