I think I was a sucker for nostalgia before I was technically old enough to experience it. In retrospect, it seems like I was subconsciously crafting a good portion of my childhood experiences simply as nostalgia fodder. I loved stories as a child—loved embellishing re-tellings of playground dramas and recalling the most perfect aspects of every family vacation and holiday. I would start a sentence with: "Remember that great hike we took all the way into the Grand Canyon?" My brother would respond with: "Yeah, we ran out of water a few hours before we made it back and thought we were going to have to be air lifted out."

My memories involve the whole family singing Peter, Paul and Mary songs in the car; Bill remembers the time his shoebox full of car games and colored pencils and treasures was left on the car roof, and he watched through the back window of the station wagon as it tumbled and spilled all over the road. I guess I was a revisionist historian at an early age. Luckily, my dad is an avid photographer, so there were always plenty of Kodak moments captured on film to back up my rosy memories. (Who takes pictures when you’re dehydrated and hiking up a steep canyon path, or when a child’s treasures are spilling out along the highway?)

I had such luck as a child with nostalgia and the necessary fodder for it, I fully expected to continue down that path through college, into marriage, and, of course, through parenthood. In college, it involved reading literature on the Commons lawn with my liberal Christian-hippy friends, then jumping up for an impromptu game of Frisbee. In early marriage, it was going on a rustic camping trip, or having friends over for dinner and wine at our very cool (but appropriately simple) century-old apartment. With just a bit of effort and denial, my life could be parsed out into a series of those slow-motion, music-accompanied interludes you often get in the middle of a movie, when things are at their happiest peak (usually right before some major tragedy or complication enters the picture).

Not surprisingly, the tragedy and complication in my life didn't suddenly "enter the picture;" it was there all along, being held back, in part, by the idealism and nostalgia. The reality is that I went through childhood confused about who I was and who I was supposed to be, according to God or my parents, or whoever. Later, at my Christian college, I had plenty of friends and certainly could fake happy scenes with some success. But there was always an underlying feeling of not quite belonging, no matter who I was with, no matter who I was trying to be. I wasn't completely at home in my life, which extended to my first marriage, which contributed to my divorce. We were young, and didn’t even know ourselves, let alone each other. We had plenty in common, but half of those traits and interests we were able to check off our Ideal Mate Lists were there in the first place only to perpetuate the façade.

By the time it was all said and done, I had let go of so much—friends, a husband, a home, a couple of churches, a sense of security in God's love, the "perfect child" performance I had enacted for my parents, and all the other acts that go along with nurturing a life of nostalgia. It was painful to let each layer go, but perhaps the most difficult layer to shed was an addiction to nostalgia itself—everything else stuck painfully to it like an enormous bandage.

The word "nostalgia" dates back to the mid-seventeenth century, and was formed by two Greek words: "nostos," which means "returning home," and "algos," which is a "pain or longing." While it was originally used to describe a longing for someone's native land, today most of us would describe it as a deep ache—a yearning for a lost time and/or place. Other words that come to mind when I think about my own tendency toward nostalgia include melancholy, bitter-sweet, idealistic, and romantic. Those words still make me feel cozy in a strange, sick way, but it's difficult to find anything in my past to actually long for. I value all of those painful, heart-wrenching experiences, because I know they were necessary in order to bring me to a place of wholeness and peace in the moment, but I certainly don't pine for those times. I don’t think fondly of them as I stare into a campfire or walk idly along a leafy sidewalk in autumn. Those days are over.

I'm beginning to think letting go of the idea of nostalgia is my final step—at least when it comes to this particular challenge. My now is so blessed—a new husband, work I love, and a church community full of people who don’t expect perfection but embrace the process involved in following God—I want to focus on the moment. That’s why my new addiction, if I must have one, is to <em>nowstalgia</em>. The new challenge, because there seems to always be one, will be to not fall into a similar trap, letting nowstalgia slip back into my old nostalgia comfort zone. I mean, now I have actual experiences and moments that don't need to be edited or revised to be beautiful. I have true nostalgia fodder—to treasure and remember, but to contain so it doesn’t creep up and block my view of now.

Late last night, I was transferring my photo library to my new MacBook and took a long detour through the 600 or so photos Jason and I took on our honeymoon last summer in Greece. It truly was a picture-perfect trip, in every way. But I’m able to recognize that while photos are to be treasured, they should simultaneously be held in slight suspicion.

That’s why, when we were camping last weekend, I made a dash through the rain to get the camera. The whole family was crowded under a drippy tarp eating hotdogs and beans, praying that the rain would stop long enough for us to set up our tent. Not only did I capture a different kind of memory, I managed to get a drop of rain on the camera lens, which blurred the center of every photo we took the next day. Yeah, that’s all frustrating stuff, but I’m trying to accept that there’s no way to perfectly choreograph the life of a family of five AND the weather and all of the other things completely out of my control. I'm much more able now, than I was 10 or 20 years ago, to enjoy the humor and value the life-lessons embedded in the imperfections. Because too pretty and too sweet, after all, do not a good story (or life) make.

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