I was born with a rare condition that makes it hard for me to live full-time in the present. As medical professionals have failed to recognize this affliction as an actual thing, I have come up with my own name. I call it congenital nostalgia and I swear I felt its effects immediately upon exiting my mother’s womb. Seriously, I had no sooner drawn my first breath than my infant soul began pining for those halcyon days of gestation.
Nostalgia is often associated with feelings of sadness, but for me it can be a source of great comfort. It’s not that I am “trapped in the past” or don’t look forward to the future; it’s just that good times linger long in my mind, and memories of those times often call me back to visit. In fact, they call me back so regularly, so spontaneously that at any given moment I can be living parallel lives, the one where my body is and the other where my heart can be found. With no more provocation than a whiff of perfume, I relive the joy of a past experience with such clarity that I am disoriented when I re-emerge into reality. More than once I have been in so deep, so immersed in a time gone by, that catching a glimpse of my present-day self in the mirror has given me quite a start. (Gasp! Who is that senior citizen and what has she done with 1978?)
Short strolls down memory lane are enjoyable, but sometimes my spirit longs for an extended visit. When that pull becomes too strong to resist, I gratefully climb into my very own time machine, also known as my car, and am magically transported into the past by the power of music.
Once the car door slams and Sirius XM radio is tuned to the appropriate decade, I am anywhere I want to be, from spying on my big sister’s Sweet 16 party in the ‘60s to attending my own in the ‘70s to chaperoning my daughter’s in the ‘90s. I’ve even done a kind of Double Dutch across the time-space continuum, listening to ‘50s music to relive the fun of the ‘70s, via the American Graffiti soundtrack. (It’s no accident that I skipped right over the ‘80s because with the exception of my daughter’s birth and shoulder pads to balance out my big hips, there is nothing I care to remember about the 1980s, including the music.)
Obviously, doing time hops through music is nothing new for me, but this past winter I went back further than I ever had, with a profound effect. Purely by accident, I landed on ‘40s Junction and immediately felt a deep and mysterious resonance in my soul. At the first strains of “Moonlight Serenade,” I fell under a kind of déjà voodoo spell. Listening to the music of my parents’ youth conjured up images of them so alive their presence was almost palpable, as if their spirits were rising up from some secret place and filling my car like a heavy mist. And filling my eyes with tears.
It seemed I was no longer experiencing my own memories, but somehow theirs. Their energy infused my being. I felt their youthful vitality, their vibrance coursing through me. I felt both their fear and their courage as they faced a World War, and I marveled at the leap of faith it took to marry in the middle of it, not knowing if they would ever see each other again. Finally, I felt their delirious joy at the war’s end and their eager hopefulness at starting a new life together. This wondrous time travel repeated every time I closed my car door on the outside world and entered the sanctity of my 1940s cocoon. It was my salvation during the dark, dreary days of winter.
So, while there are certain traits I was born with that I rue, such as noncompliant hair, the metabolism of a sloth, and the inability to remember why I went into a room, I am nothing but grateful for my congenital nostalgia. With a helping hand from satellite radio, it allows me to keep the people I love with me always and lets me continue to learn from them long after they have passed from this life.
There is a line from John Banville’s novel The Sea that expresses more eloquently than I the way I experience life, and I think of it often.
“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
And, for me, that second heart is an exquisite and precious gift.