[Garden Memories: XXXII]
Nostalgia is considered a positive experience, defined as an emotion associated with a sense of longing for the past. The past is often desirable because it’s perceived as better in some memorable way than the present.
But I’ve never considered nostalgia, which my mom used to call “memory lane,” a positive experience. The physical sensations associated with nostalgia are closer to the feelings I have when I’m coming down with the flu: not fully symptomatic, but my mouth becomes a little dryer, joints stiffen a bit, and my appetite shrinks. It feels more like mild grief; the memory is a trigger for re-experiencing something lost.
Consider my first garden memory: heaping, creamy spoonfuls of autumn-ripe persimmons. The very writing of that sentence sinks to the bottom of my stomach, knowing that mere memory cannot recover the youthful utopian experience of sharing my neighbor’s seasonal offerings. So much of that memory is gone forever.
I wonder if all my gardening is an attempt to recover some of my childhood innocence. I wonder if it’s embodied nostalgia. Perhaps my conscious mind is in denial—hence the feelings of mild illness—but my spirit deeply craves the innocence and beauty of neighbors sharing their harvest, children filling their pockets with fruit, and a close connection to the seasons and land.
Maybe nostalgia is positive after all if I learn to see it as a spiritual craving.
