I have moved a lot of times and lived a lot of places. Different cities, different states, different countries. And whenever I re-visit a place that I have lived before, I expect it to have changed.
But on a couple of occasions, it hasn’t. Which, oddly, is even worse.
You would think that going back to a place which remains the same would be like dipping your toes into a warm pool of nostalgia. Oh! Here is the same wallpaper that I stared at while I sat at this same kitchen table and ate buttery cinnamon toast from the same local bakery thirty years ago. Oh! This is the same dining booth and tile floors and menu and beverage station as when I frequented this place as a hungry college student.
It is nostalgic. But if the memories are good, it’s more of a piercing-your-heart-with-a-warm-sharp-needle than it is dipping-your-toes-in-a-warm-pool.
I spent some time thinking about this. Sitting with my melancholy and wondering why. Why this beautifully-preserved piece of my younger years should make me more sad than happy.
And I think it’s the contrast.
When everything changes with the world as it revolves, this too can be sad, but it’s harder to remember, truly, how it was. You see change, and maybe the change is scary, or the progress comes at a larger expense (that old saying about paving paradise) but your memories of what it was flit by like a butterfly: beautiful, effervescent — but intractable.
And yet. When something is the same. It becomes a lynchpin, a point of antiquity upon which you can compare all the changes with stark contrast. That old wallpaper? It’s the same but what about me? I sit at this table with a cell phone in my hand and bills to consider and what. about. the. state. of. the. world.
The past is always simpler times and while I don’t believe for a second that’s actually true, that’s what my heart wants me to believe.
I don’t mean this to come off as a cry for simpler times. That’s not true, either. I love my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I am absolutely enamored with the choices I’ve made, the experiences I’ve had, and the wonderful life and family that I’ve built. I regret nothing about the people in my life, and the choices that I’ve made to get me here.
Put like that, what, exactly, am I nostalgic for? I don’t know. I’m sure it’s the rose-colored glasses I wear about life before cell phones and social media. Before the climate crisis and increasing political polarization and internet trolls. Negativity aside, so many things have changed for the better, and I am glad for that. But sometimes – like when standing in a time warp of addresses past – I wax nostalgic.
So let’s take a brief journey, shall we?
Please enjoy this selection of photos that I took in the mid-aughts. Many of these places I lived, or visited for a significant amount of time. Some remain the same, some do not.
