By Maria Rodriguez
They say laughter is the best medicine, but for today, it’s nostalgia.
Nostalgia has become my and everyone else’s (based on my observation) quarantine staple. According to the Cambridge dictionary, nostalgia is “a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past.”
Though nostalgia is bittersweet, it leans more into the greatness and joy of the past, the only elements that make nostalgia bittersweet are regret and/or the deep desire to relive the moment that has passed.
A few quarantines ago, my parents decided that it would be best to stay in my suburban childhood home for the summer.
And of course, the essential dramatic event that takes place when one moves back to their childhood home is the discovery of long-forgotten memories and trinkets from the so-called “good old days.” I found old diaries, what seems to be a photo album of appliances I found interesting, and home video. During what sometimes seems to be constant isolation, seeing videos of me when I was in primary school and re-reading old diaries would make me cry and laugh at the same time; at how clueless I was with a person, asking myself why have my embarrassing habits caught on camera unconsciously stuck to me after all these years, and well… you know. And due to my constant exposure to numerous mementos, I have been bitten by the “Make-memories-for-future-nostalgia bug.” I now have this seemingly ceaseless urge to record almost every single moment of my life, in fear of missing those “Kodak Moments” (Yes, I’m going full-on-way-before-I-was-born nostalgia).
I was somewhat mortified with the idea of being quarantined within the walls of which a million memories are plastered; the steps I hopped down on my way out to the door and into the school van, the living room where I raced on scooters and trikes with my friends, the bedroom where all my childish fantasies were born. I thought it would be miserable to remember all the friendships and vows formed, knowing I would have to wait for a very long time before such memories can be made again. But as a person who has lived only a little over a decade, I was wrong. Recalling my childhood memories of innocent’s past has become my daily ritual, a wisdom-filled teacher of patience. I realised (though not yet fully internalised) that: “Nostalgia will always be there, but today will never be, so I must live in it.”