Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Nostalgic ramblings and Autumn

What is it about new seasons...
Autumn.
it makes me inhale deeper and smile more...
A skip in my step and a fresh breeze burns its way through my lungs and chills my skin in such a lovely way...
I get to put on boots :):):) and scarves. And layers and layers of lovely thick sweaters and socks and slippers and mittens and all sorts of delightful softness.
Something about Fall makes me feel fresh and new and excited about life. Maybe its just the memories of going back to school shopping, and the mind-numbing excitement of the FIRST day of school and new books that smelt like experience and new clothes and new pencils and erasers that are shiny and perfectly proportioned...
The brisk breeze slapping a coat of fresh pink on our noses and cheeks numb from the wind and excitement and coldness tingling our lungs and being out of breath as we flopped in our desks with excited bright faces....

Why do we have to grow up and lose our childish innocent view of the world and lose our excitement for the little things that made our little hearts thrill and jump.. the fear of the needle was so real but when I hugged my teddy bear it was all better... Little feet and little hands that never expected that the world would try to destroy their happiness one day and chew them up and spit them out and that some days they would wake up and dread life and wonder if they ever could be happy again...
Then some day they would become happy and think they loved life but in the back of their mind they would always remember those tiny little feet that wore flashing shoes and that excited little girl with the long braid that everyone pulled that was so excited about field trips that she could go to sleep the night before even if she pinched her little eyes closed so tight she saw little orange speckles...
And my throat tightens as I think of the little hands folded so tight that her fingers turned white as she knelt by the saggy blue couch with her family in the evenings, and she knelt on her little knees and could barely reach the couch to lean on it but she never knew that she would grow up and wish she was little again and wish that fresh little heart never had grown up and found out that things could make your heart hurt so bad that it felt ripped in two, or that she would ever stop skipping in public and hold her daddy's hand less and less often and start to notice how she looked in the mirror and wish she was different and start expecting other peoples' judgement about how she acted and how she dressed and how she looked... and how she sat on her bed with her pictures of horses tacked to the green peeling wallpaper around her and wrote stories about girls that were beautiful and didn't have freckles or little round noses and plain brown hair... that little thing trying to figure out the world and wishing to be someone else, she would have never believed that one day she would wish she could go back and tell herself that she was perfect just the way she was and she didn't need to try and change herself to be lovely.
She would have looked at you with self-conscious green-blue eyes and wondered what her friends would think if she felt that way, and wondered what you meant.
A little brown cupboard that creaked when she opened it covered with chapstick and lotion, walmart body spray and jones bottles... the sound of the frogs in the pond and the cars swishing past through the open window at night... the light pink plywood floor that protested even when small feet stepped on it, bunk beds and geese on the wallpaper... a closet full of dolls and the green shaggy carpet in the hallway...
That her little family would one day be her most precious possession...
That little girl never knew that she was making memories that she would remember when she had become a lady and sit and the table and type amidst tears of bittersweet nostalgia and the memory of innocence of young life.
She didn't know that her sister would survive an accident that was pretty close to death, and that she would forever remember the mixed smell of the hospital and of complete fear and horror of seeing her little sisters body twisted on the ground would clutch her heart for years and make her cry...
Or that her little brothers would grow up and stretch into tall boys and lose the baby cheeks and have to experience the world, even though she wishes that she could just protect them from it..
That her Mom and Dad would grow more precious to her every day, and they would grow more grey hairs and that it would break her heart because she would realize how short life is..
When she was 13 she didn't know that the girl she smiled at in church with the blond braid and glasses would be there through the toughest times in her life, and that they would say goodbye so many times and that they would hold eachother up while they were broken and crying, and that they would have so many eager prayers together and hug eachvother so tight and wish they would never have to let go... and that she would be my bridesmaid on that special day that I had dreamed about my whole life... and would send me off to my honeymoon and then sit with my mom and my sister in my empty bedroom afterwards...

Nostalgia hurts sometimes, and sometimes it just is a happy pain that makes your eyes overflow and your heart feel like it wants to explode.
Its become apparent to me that I don't want to be one of those people that lay on their deathbed and wish they had done things differently and wish that they would have made a better life for themselves. I want to enjoy every single flipping moment I have here, and I aim to do that.

<3

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