longing for nostalgia

help, my heart is stuck in the early 2000s

I celebrated my 12th birthday in an empty parking lot with a handful of my best friends, a few R/C monster trucks, and a bunch of scrap plywood turned into little ramps. We repurposed my soccer cones to make a racetrack and spent hours just giggling at the way the trucks would crash into each other, leaving bits of plastic in the cracked pavement. That birthday was unlike the midwest fancies of Skyzone Trampoline Park and Zap Zone Lasertag and Paradise Park Go-Karting; it was so much more special.

Some might claim this as a beloved act of frugality as opposed to some outside-the-box thinking that only happens in the sunlit minds of immigrant parents dreaming of manufacturing memories. It’s as if they curated an archive that we’d build on with uncontrollable laughter, scraped knees, and mischievous outings. We built repositories of memories that have the sharpest emotional impact, writing them into our locally stored files, anchoring us when the weight of the present feels impossible to hold.

I often wonder why we romanticize yesterday and fear tomorrow, when today was tomorrow and will be yesterday. I crave to bring back the childhood priority of making memories, taking for granted the present moment and waiting for time to pass so I can sob about that moment in the past.

Nostalgia reminds us that, for a while, life was simpler, joy was unplanned, and freedom was something we didn’t yet know we could lose. It’s the gift of having lived, a place I can revisit whenever I need to remember that happiness can be small, fleeting, and just enough. But nostalgia isn’t left to some otherworldly force, it’s crafted intentionally, knowing one day a future self would look back with a soft heart.

I recently learned that life doesn’t actually give you lemons; they’re crossbred from two different fruits: a wild citrus and a semi-domesticated bitter orange. Our memories are the same, just spliced together, rehearsed and rewritten until they glow just a bit brighter. And as much as I long to unlock new versions of myself and travel the world and meet interesting humans, I’d also love to just sit and marinate alongside my younger self, both of us untouched by the pull of time.

We grow nostalgic because it’s nearly impossible to stay rooted to the present. Time moves so fast, a violent act of spaghettification, demanding we counterbalance its weight by reaching back into the comfort of what was.

I spent my most recent birthday with some of the same kids from that parking lot, older now, changed by time. My parents no longer plan my birthday parties, and the faces around me reflect years of change, but the spark of those days remains.

We still laugh about the short films we made at sleepovers, about stealing gum from vending machines, stories now polished smooth with time, each retelling making the past feel a bit closer, a bit brighter. And that parking lot still feels like a land of freedom, untouched by deadlines and endless notifications, just as it was meant to be. Even the sun played its part, staying out a bit longer that evening, just for me.

Northville, Michigan | October 2010

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quote unquote

“As with nostalgia, the highest function of the future is to enhance the significance of the present.” - Daniel Pink

"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion" - Bell Hooks

“Where I can be in the company of my teenage self and he can remind me of something about hope and youth and what it is to know you have things ahead of you that are new.” - Dolly Alderton

“Only a handful of people who profess to have had a happy childhood; all the rest are survivors, everyone was given either too much or too little, life is always a long journey of healing from childhood.” - Hila Bloom

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This piece was inspired by a recent visit from my cousins, with whom I shared a birthday weekend with unhinged inside jokes and hard drives of childhood memories. This birthday sparked many thoughts, some in planning for the future and others in longing for the past. But really it was a reminder to cherish and live the present because it won’t be so for long.

I’m looking forward to squeezing in some final memories to store in the 2024 folder, along with four more letters coming your way. If this piece sparked a bit of nostalgia from your childhood, feel free to restack or comment with your own stories - I’d love to hear them.

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if you’re nostalgic about my previous post, here it is:

chaplin, chappell, and chappelle