Nostalgia

We are all out of our time much of the time. But I don’t want to much lament this human condition, for time traveling is what we must do. It is good to be in the moment – to be yourself here and now. But to be human, we must extend back to who we were and out to who we might become.

And so I sat in a coffee shop, sipping on a straw anchored in a pink fizzy creamy drink. The dishwasher on break blew the end of the paper wrapping of his straw into the hair of the barista on the other side of the counter. She look up at him and her eyes said it all. But I won’t you tell what. Then this is what the other barista - first her pony tail swinging to the music coming out of the radio, then her hands scrubbing clean the lipstick from a white coffee cup at the sink – said out loud: “I’m nostalgic for the summer I haven’t had yet.”

It was early spring. The sun bright on the bagel place across the street. The shadow of a lamppost low on the pale yellow wall looked as if it might walk on down the sidewalk. But the air was still late winter cool. And I was drinking pink and eventually I would be sucking on ice.

How could anyone so young be nostalgic? And then my mind slipped and I was young. I was something of a fool then, not because I was young, but because I think I had failed to learn what, at this age, seems like some small wisdom. Actually, I am often amazed at what young people know. And maybe I did know more then than I now have recalled that I did.

A scene flashed into my mind. Young people – call them kids – whose faces I cannot now see, sitting in the Pizza Hut, waiting for a pizza, blowing the ends of the wrappers of our straws at each other. What did our eyes say to each other? I cannot tell you, because I cannot remember. There must have been some of what I now can see through my older eyes as I sit here watching.

But you see, it doesn’t matter. I’m already nostalgic for the summer I haven’t had yet. I would tell you all about it, but again, you see, I haven’t lived it yet. But it might surely be as sweet as a strawberry-peach cremosa. Or maybe I’ll have an egg crème. Or maybe I’ll fall in love with someone all over again.

for Bailie, Cheyenne, and Alejandro