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Sydney M. Williams
Essay from Essex
“Nostalgia”
January 1, 2020
“It’s a funny
thing about coming home. Looks the same,
smells the same. You realize what has changed
is you.”
Eric
Roth (1945-)
“The
Curious case of Benjamin Button,” 2008
(A
screenplay adopted from the eponymous
short
story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922)
Nostalgia suggests a sentimentality
for the past, typically for a period or a place with happy personal
associations. The aphorist Mason Cooley once wrote, perhaps more harshly than
he had to, “Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past.”
Regardless, our memories do focus on the positive.
Asked by grandson Alex a few months
ago to describe what it was like growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
I found myself stymied. How does one sift between good memories and bad? What
is truth, and what is simply a memory one wants to believe? World events do not
define our childhood, nor does the political scene nor even the state of the
economy; though all three affect our lives. It is, rather, the relationships
with our parents, siblings, friends; it is school, and what chores and play
consumed our days. It is the small things, like the instance when I was twelve
and found a rare dollar warming my pocket. By chance, the baker who delivered
bread and pastries from the back of his van twice a week drove up the driveway.
I foolishly bought a dozen jelly donuts and more foolishly proceeded to devour
them without sharing. My reward was a stomach-ache and a future aversion to
jelly donuts.
Thinking of one’s childhood creates a tendency
to look for a past purified through the filter of time. What memories are real,
and which exist only in our minds? Unhappy memories become tucked away and are
more difficult to recall than those that are pleasant. In Educated, Tara
Westover’s 2018 coming-of-age story written when she was thirty-two, the author
uses half a dozen footnotes to explain that her memory may be faulty. And she
was thinking back only twenty years. In Thomas Wolfe’s novel You Can’t Go
Home Again, he explores the changing scene of American society, a universal
subject not bound by time or place. Just as in George Webber’s case (Wolfe’s
character in the novel), my hometown is different than it was sixty years ago.
Oh, yes, the bank and the post office are still on Grove Street and the library
is still on the corner of Concord and Main, just across the Contoocook River
from the center of town. But the innards are different. The Unitarian Church,
where I went as a child, is now the Unitarian Universalist Church, but it sits
in the same place, on Main Street and Summer. The elementary school I went to
has been gone for over fifty years, but I remember the dark and scary,
window-less coat closets and the strict, unsmiling teachers.
The lay-out of the streets is the
same, but the movie theater is gone, as are the depot where we used to pick up
feed for the animals, and Derby’s, the department store where one could buy
anything from clothes to appliances. The biggest store in town today is the
Toadstool, a bookstore started by a younger, enterprising brother almost fifty
years ago. The physical changes are more cosmetic than foundational. And, yes,
Summer Street becomes Middle Hancock Road, as one drives north. Whit’s tow,
where I learned to ski, has been replaced by affordable housing units. The
Dodge Place, where my parents went to live after they were married in 1938, is
still four miles from the village on Middle Hancock Road, about halfway between
Peterborough and Hancock. The house and barns still stand, but seemed sad when
we recently drove by, in need of paint and too quiet, absent the activity and
noise that nine children provided. Seen only in my imagination were the goats
and horses that once grazed and played in the fields behind. The pair of
peacocks that adorned the front yard have gone to wherever peacocks go when
they die.
Two recent events caused a wave of
nostalgia to sweep over me and reminded me that I had never answered Alex’s request.
The first was a painting in a gallery in Old Lyme. It depicted a summer cabin,
such as one might have owned or rented seventy years ago, in the early post-War
years, usually on a remote lake or pond. It was a simple structure, in need of
repair. One could envision a hand-driven water pump in the kitchen, no
electricity and an outhouse out back. An aunt and uncle had such a place on
Martha’s Vineyard when I was young, a place I remember with a dozen of us
packed into the small uninsulated camp. It had bunk rooms for the children and a
half-mooned two-holer thirty feet from the back door. It dawned on me that my
grandchildren may never know a life where children entertain themselves in
small boats, swim in the lagoon, dig for clams, play hide-and-seek and fly
kites. The second event was watching a pick-up game of hockey on Exchange Club
Pond in Old Saybrook. As I watched the half dozen skaters pushing a puck
around, I thought back to clear, cold winter days when I played similar, informal
games of hockey on the Fly Pond in Peterborough, not far from where Summer
Street becomes Middle Hancock Road. When we got bored with hockey, we would
race up to girls and, in a preteen and early-teen mating ritual, yank off their
hats and make them catch us. Once my brother, sister and I watched mournfully
as a truck bound for Benson’s Wild Animal Farm carried the carcass of one of
our horses that had died a couple of days earlier. Later, as the sun began to
set, we would light bonfires and toast marshmallows for S’mores. “It is
strange how much you can remember about places like that,” E.B. White wrote
in his essay “Once More to the Lake,” “once you allow your mind to return
into the grooves which lead back.”
Our childhood lives are long when living
through them but pass by quickly in retrospect. In my case, my childhood ended
when I was fifteen and went off to boarding school. While I have some memories
of when I was three and four, most are between five and fifteen – not a lot of
years to form the character we become. But those moments leave an indelible
impression. “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it
becomes a memory,” wrote Dr. Seuss. I can think of hundreds of such moments
– stopping at Howard Johnsons in Brattleboro, after a day of skiing at Hogback
or Bromley, with coffee for my father and hot chocolate or a piece of apple pie
for us; playing in the hayloft, and once carrying my sister Charlotte back to
the house after she fell through the trap door; being summoned from Miss
Flagg’s second grade class by a fifth grader who told me he was going to beat
me up after school, and being scared stiff the rest of the day (thankfully, he
forgot his threat); swinging on birch trees, ala Robert Frost; walking “over
the hill” along the mile and half wood road that separated our paternal
grandparents’ summer home from ours; spending three days and two nights with my
mother in the White Mountains, when I was going through puberty; playing on the
swings my father had built in our backyard; posing for our artist parents; picking
wild strawberries in the field next to the “Brick House,” now the Well School; climbing
on skis the two and a half mile trail from Pinkham Notch to the “Hoard
Johnson’s,” a lean-to at the base of Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mt. Washington. My brother
Frank and our father were with me. The next day we hiked up Wildcat and skied
down. I recall a family trip to Stowe when I was twelve, and the embarrassment
of having to share a bed with an aunt. I remember cantering “Judy” along dirt
roads, with a younger sibling on “Mitzi,” a smart, stubborn Shetland – the pony
on whom we had all learned to ride – who refused to let the much bigger “Judy”
pass. And then years later, after I had left home, I heard that my mother had cradled
“Mitzi’s” head in her arms as she took her last breath. These memories tear
through my conscience like an icy dagger. You can’t go home again, as Thomas
Wolfe titled his posthumous novel. You can, but sometimes it is hard.
As children, we lived dual lives. Most
of our time was spent in Peterborough, but now and again we would go to East
River or Wellesley to visit our grandparents. It was a glimpse into a world different
from the one we lived. In Wellesley where my father grew up, our grandparents
lived in a large Victorian house, the one in which my grandmother had been born
in 1875, and which became hers when she was married in 1907. It is where my
father grew up. The house is on Lake Waban (now owned by a cousin), a fancy term
for a body of water that we thought of as more of a pond than a lake. My
mother’s parents lived in a large house on Long Island Sound in Madison,
Connecticut. It had its own beach where we swam and went out in a rowboat.
There was a barn and a paddock for the animals my mother would bring with her.
Before my grandfather died in 1947, he would take us to “Bruin’s Lair,” a
hidden spot, perfect for a friendly bear, in the woods on a path beyond the
barn. There we would leave treats which were always gone the next day.
But most of my growing up was in New
Hampshire. It may only be the way we remember things, but life seemed simpler
in those days. We lived four miles from a village of 2,500 people. There were
fewer time-saving devices; an absence of technology meant board games that
required shared participation; we memorized poetry and short speeches. I recall
one evening memorizing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as I walked around the
house. At school, we were reminded almost daily of the Ten Commandments, the
Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. While patriotism was common and
mingled honor with love for country, it was temporarily hijacked by Senator
Joseph McCarthy in 1950, when he used it to falsely accuse dozens of loyal
Americans of Communist sympathies, solely to advance his dark vision. Personal
freedom was a bicycle. Mine came in the form of an “English” bike on my thirteenth
birthday, in January 1954. Taking it out, I skidded on the ice, went over the
handlebars bruising my jaw. The lesson I learned: Don’t ride a bike on the ice!
Nevertheless, our parents worried less as to our whereabouts than do parents
today. That didn’t mean they loved us less, just that they felt the environment
more secure and they trusted us.
Expectations were less, in terms of
what government would provide. It was assumed we would look after ourselves. On
the first day of school when in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s fifth grade class, it was
expected I would check on my sister Betsy who had just entered Mrs. Morris’
first grade class. Inequality existed. Some kids had parents who lived in
bigger houses; some kids were smarter and some stronger and more agile. We
didn’t philosophize; we were realists. We knew that some had the ability to hit
a ball further and to run faster. Some received better grades and others were more
diligent. We got into wrestling fights, especially with bullies. Misogyny, I am
sure, existed, but was absent in our household where we children saw our
parents as equal partners. That was also true of our grandparents. Our
grandmothers, we all knew, were as accomplished as our grandfathers. Our
parents and grandparents were lovers of nature and the environment. They made
sure we cleaned up after ourselves when picnicking or camping – but we were not
told that the Planet would die if we did not switch from wood and coal to oil
or gas, let alone solar or wind. In our small town there was some diversity,
not in race or religion, but in the ideas and habits of families.
It is important to keep the past in perspective
– what we should treasure and what we should leave behind. The British
journalist and author of The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley, wrote recently in The
Spectator: “We are living through the greatest improvement in living
conditions in history.” Extreme poverty has declined around the world.
Despite violence on TV shows, in movies and on video games and the religious
tyranny that persists in much of the world, there is less violence today than
at any time in history. In rich countries, consumption of minerals and fossil
fuels has declined, while standards of living have increased. Reliving the past
should not cause us to forget how improved our lives are today. The misty past
hides blemishes and the future will have its share. As I wrote earlier, we
remember the good and suppress the bad, like getting out of bed in the winter
in a house with no central heat; bringing in the kindling, so my father could
light the wood stove; having to share a bedroom with three siblings. Clothing
material was less friendly: snowsuits became soggy and woolen mittens never
kept hands warm. In winter, we had to carry water from the house to the barn
for the horses and goats. Picking blackberries on Cobb’s Hill or high-bush blueberries
in the “next field “were chores, not outings. Even so, there were moments of fun.
I remember once returning from an afternoon of picking blackberries and seeing goats
peer out from every downstairs living room window. Someone – it could not have
been me – had forgotten to shut the gate to the field and had left the door to
the house open.
We forget, also, how improved we are
as a country – how civil rights and woman’s rights acts of fifty years ago have
bettered the lives of minorities and women; how Medicare and Medicaid have
helped the elderly and the poor. Polio was a constant dread for parents and
children. The Salk vaccine was first administered in 1955. In 1950, according
to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), childhood deaths in
1950 were 29.2 per 1,000. By 1999, that
had dropped to 7.1 per 1,000. Pneumonia and influenza killed 314 children per
100,000 as late as 1960. Forty years later, the number was 8 per 100,000. While
nuclear weapons still exist, we no longer – perhaps naively – live with the
threat of annihilation from the Soviet Union. Changes in communication have
been revolutionary. Today, when on an errand, if I don’t have my cell phone, I
feel naked.
We all have a past. It helped formed
who we became. It is important for us who are older to communicate our story to
succeeding generations; for it helps in their search for identity. But we must
keep it within reason; it should not dominate our lives. The last sentence in
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has pertinence. “So, we beat
on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Fitzgerald
refers to an innate desire to recapture the past – that we might correct
mistakes we once made. But the truth is the past is the past. It is something
to cherish, to learn from, and then move on.
In this season, as the old year goes
out and the new year comes in, we sing Robert Burns song, “Auld Lang
Syne,” an evocation of the past, “Should old acquaintance be forgot/And
never brought to mind?” The answer is no, we should not forget old
acquaintances, but it is unhealthy to dwell too much on the past. So, Alex, it
is the present and the future over which we have some control. That should be your
focus.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Labels: Dr. Seuss, E. B. White, Eric Roth, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matt Ridley, Robert Burns, Robert Frost, Tara Westover, Thomas Wolfe
