When I was in my twenties, my mother was in her fifties. I made lighthearted jokes about the soft jowls forming on her face and the lines at the corners of her eyes. I should have known better. But who knew when I was 25 that one day I would be in my fifties and looking in the mirror wondering where the saggy skin came from and how long it was planning to stick around?
Last month I celebrated the 24th anniversary of my 29th birthday. This birthday brought about feelings of nostalgia. I feel nostalgic for that 20-something person who was carefree. The 20- something who traveled freely had no idea of TSA and only had an x-ray when medically necessary. Trump was a comedic character, and Russia had calmed down. Winter was still fraught with snowstorms, and spring came when it was supposed to. In my memory, life was nearly perfect.
That is the thing about memory; it is not always truthful, and nostalgia can be dangerous. Do not get me wrong; I love nostalgia. I am nostalgic for eras when I was not even alive yet. Nostalgia makes me think times were better when we did not have the internet or Trump. When the seasons were reliable, airlines served full-course meals—a time when people were polite and did not scream at one another from behind a computer screen. I feel nostalgic for the days when my mother was here, and death seemed like something so far away for anyone I loved that it was not on my horizon. I am, ashamed to admit, nostalgic for my six-pack abs.
I have curated my memories and filtered them with a rosy sheen. In my memory, I was a perfect child, and the sun was always shining. This way of remembering makes me happy but also colors my world. It almost made me forget that it wasn't always sunny and I was not always perfect. It made me block out those moments when my behavior might have been a bit trying or my penchant for melancholy a little overbearing.
My father would take me to New Jersey to visit relatives when I was young. We would stay with my grandmother and Aunt Jean, my dad's sister, who lived with her. On Saturday morning, we would pack our things and say goodbye to my mother and sister. My father's goodbye would be quick and painless. Mine would look more like a goodbye worthy of a tragic scene in a movie—tears and sadness in leaving my mother behind. My father would wait until his patience probably ran short and visions of traffic muddled his brain, and then he would usher me out. If memory serves, my mother would say, "Oh Karen, I will see you tomorrow ." with just a hint of annoyance. Once on our way, I would settle down. The visit was always pleasant; I was doted on a little as the youngest of all the cousins. On Sunday, usually, after breakfast, we would pack our things and say goodbye to my grandmother, and well, you probably know where this is going, I would cry. Those who know me well are perhaps not shocked by this, or maybe you are thinking kindly, "that's okay; sometimes it is hard for the littles to regulate their emotions." But this past June, when I traveled to Florida to visit my dad and step-mom on the morning I left for the airport, I cried. My dad, to his credit, and my step-mom, who has had less experience with me, just rolled with it. I guess, at this point, it is just expected.
In the Pixar animated film "Inside Out," we are introduced to 11-year-old Riley, who is on the cusp of adolescence and also dealing with her family's move from Minnesota to San Francisco. The film's creator, Pete Docter, wanted to explore the emotions a young person might experience during these transitions. He came up with the idea of using the feelings of Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Joy. Each one is animated to resemble how we view these emotions. Sadness is a slumpy, blue little character. Fear is a slender, shoulder-slouching character with a look of near-constant dread. Anger is short and red. Disgust is emerald green with a posture just dripping with disapproval. Initially, Docter partnered with Fear and Joy. He thought his funny depiction of Fear would counter Joy when the movie was ready for its first screening that combination didn't work. After two considerable successes, Monsters, Inc and Up, Docter began to think his career was over. The arc of his story, in which Joy would learn a powerful lesson from Fear, wasn't there. Fear had nothing to teach Joy. As Docter spiraled into despair that he would have to leave his career and work in a community of people he loved, he fell deeper into sadness, and genius struck. The sadder Docter became, the more he realized how much our emotions connect us. He consulted Dasher Keltner, a psychology professor at Berkley, who told Docter that our emotions all serve a purpose, and the purpose of sadness is to trigger compassion. Docter changed the script. He put Sadness front and center with Joy.
Sadness mixed with joy creates a space that Susan Cain discusses in her book, "Bittersweet- How Sorrow and Longing Make us Whole."
Cain describes this emotion "as a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow, an acute awareness of passing the time and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world."
I read this in the introduction and thought, " yes, I think that describes me" Then I took the bittersweet quiz. Cain developed this quiz with Dr. David Yaden, a research scientist from Johns Hopkins, and cognitive scientist Dr. Scoot Barry Kaufman. There are several questions you rate from 0 for not at all, and ten is complete. This is how I scored myself:
Do you tear up easily at touching TV commercials? 10
Do old photographs significantly move you? 10
Do you react intensely to music, art, or nature? 10
Have others described you as an old soul? I rated this one a 15 but had to reduce it to 10 to make the quiz work.
Do you find inspiration or comfort on a rainy day? Yeah 10
You get the picture. I scored off the chart for bittersweet. You add up everything, then divide by 15. As Cain said, "If you score above 5.7, you're a true connoisseur of the place where light and dark meet."
Brene Brown's latest book, " Atlas of the heart," has identified and categorized 87 emotions.
She puts bittersweet in the category entitled "Places we go when things aren't what they seem. "She describes bittersweetness as a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness. She had asked followers across social media to share examples of bittersweetness. She received more than 40,000 responses.
She said, " I don't think I was fully aware of the depth of humanity that lives in the curves of this emotion ."Responses ranged from watching children grow up, losing a loved one, moving, leaving a job, retiring, and even coming home from vacation. Isn't that the trick? To bridge that feeling of sadness to a sense of joy.
Pete Docter was on to something in his film. By the end of Inside Out, Joy recognizes that sadness is a necessary emotion. That sadness brings about compassion and understanding and is the glue that holds us all together.
When I turned 50 three years ago on the eve of the pandemic, it hit me hard—a proverbial slap of the wet noodle. I allowed nostalgia to seep into my marrow and take root. I wandered in my mind backward and conjured up memories tainted with a rosy sheen. You can get lost in this place, like a dark forest where the trees cover the sunlight, and the ground is soft and mossy, and your feet sink into it. Historian Stephanie Coontz says, " There's nothing wrong with celebrating the good things in our past. But, like witnesses, memories do not always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Nostalgia in short doses can be pleasant, maybe even helpful, but it can leave you stuck. I missed things long gone and wrapped myself in a quilt of sadness. I missed my children being younger. I missed myself being younger. I missed the simplicity of going to the grocery store without a Hazmat suit. I missed the ordinariness of life.
I am unsure what was more challenging at the time, facing some sense of mortality because I had reached a half-century or how our world was met with more considerable mortality. I had to go for the moments of joy and only let nostalgia mingle occasionally. It was a stretch for me.
Joy and sadness both have a place. And nostalgia can float between the two. A midlife crisis and a pandemic brought this liminal space for me. I had to dig deep and find myself in the present, not what has been. I can't say who the teacher was, the pandemic, or the milestone birthday. Perhaps the mid-life crisis that came with both? Perhaps. But like a perfect storm, it left some debris that has taken some time to clean up. I did find my way out. I did find a path to look for joy and be in the present moment. Not to rehearse the possibility of every bad thing that could happen and look backward to the memory of all things perfect that never were. I have come to understand that I live where light and dark meet. It is an excellent place to be most of the time. It is like living between sunset and sunrise; you can appreciate both for the unique beauty they bring.
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