Watched by belladet
Nostalgia is a sneaky drug. It creeps up on you as the leaves fall, the days shorten, and suddenly, going to Ricks seems like the end of the world. Nostalgia is a trap dressed in warm mugs of tea and scrolling through Snapchat memories. It works for a night or two, cooped up in bed, rewatching the same old movie, or rereading the book you’ve read 100 times. Falling into it is as comfortable as an old shoe. You know you need new ones, but either the moneys too tight or the stubbornness too unrelenting.
​
When my dad finally sold the old house, the house we lived in when my parents were still together, there was one summer night when it was my job to go over the remnants of my childhood room. Before I was born, my parents had painted my room in a pastel landscape of Paris. Rolling green hills, quaint little cottages and the Eiffel Tower decorated my floor to vaulted ceiling walls. You can always tell what kind of girl someone was by the aesthetic of their childhood bedroom. There were the mint green girls, the Chevron patterned girls, the Paris girls (me) and then the animal print girls. The animal print girls were always baddies.
I was sitting in my on stacked boxes labeled memories or donations. My furniture was staying in the room for my uncle's family, who would be moving in, but I was helping my dad clean out all the accumulated clutter over the years. And there was a lot of clutter. My bare feet rubbed on the old, faded carpet. I felt myself consumed by little Bella, who had spent so much time in this room wishing she was anywhere else. As her mom laid in bed all day, dealing with things beyond her imagination, trying to write shitty songs in her Doctor Who notebook. Or when she got a candle melter and spilled wax all over the carpet.
Or when her mom would come in and tell her to hide her medication. It's funny, little Bella didn't understand the severity of what that meant. I doubt my mom even remembers having me do that.
But I remember.
How could I forget?
And I cry. I cry over the shattered remnants of my childhood, over the memories of my loneliness. For a second, I relish it. I lean into the ache in my chest but find nothing there to keep me from collapsing inwards like an ouroboros snake. My dad calls my name from downstairs. His voice pulls me back to the surface, and I wipe the tears growing sticky on my cheeks. I breathe in and out, admonish myself for falling into old traps. He calls my name again, so I hurry downstairs before he realizes somethings amiss.
​
He's in the kitchen with our old tv. It leans on his leg, "Bella, gimme a hand." We lift the tv into its box and carry it out to dad's grey Honda Accord. He Jenga's it into the backseat and we drive away. Leaving the culd-e-sac and an empty house behind with nothing but paint and new flooring left to fill it.
A year later, after my uncle and his family had moved in, they invited us over for Christmas dinner. My dad told me we didn't have to go; if it would be too hard for me, he would understand. Watch Elf or A Christmas Story. But I wanted a Christmas dinner with a side of my family I wasn't as close with. I couldn't take away the opportunity to have Christmas dinner with a family he had never really been close with. So we went, and for once, the house was clean. No tchotchkes stacked in the living room, no cat food coating the kitchen benches sitting at the counter, and the smell of animals had been fanned away. A Yankee Candle sat on what used to be a crooked coffee table, melting sugar cookie fragrance into the air. For the first time in years, the old house I had lived in for so long finally felt like a home.
That night, after amazing food my uncle had cooked, little hors d'oeuvres and baked treats, some fun desserts that my cousins had made, I cried in the car ride home to my dad.
I cried in the car to my dad to the sounds of Nat King Cole crooning about the beauty of the holidays. I cried in the car to my dad for something that I had thought I had gotten over years ago. My dad turned the radio off. He pulled the car over, still in our old neighborhood, and lent over the center console to wrap his arms around my shaking shoulders.
“I'm so sorry, Bella.”
I cried even harder. Guilt curdled in my stomach because, for so long, I thought that I had moved past this. That I was no longer a victim of painful nostalgia. I couldn't formulate words to express the grief overseeing another family experience so badly what I had wanted for so long. To have a Christmas like that again, where my parents still loved each other (if they ever even had), and I lived in that house which held only good memories.
I turned my face into my dad's shoulder. My mascara ran all over his white shirt, which was the first thing I apologized for. My dad laughed, and soon, my sobbing became laughter, too, eventually dying into silence. My hands wiped the tears from my face, salty and honest.
“It isn't your fault, dad.”
I could see the guilt on his face fade a little. There was no telling if it was a manifestation of tonight or everything before. He brushed some tears from my cheek and held my head. He told me he loved me, and I told him I did too. I said I didn't know why I cried, even thought that was a lie. Even though we both did.
We drove home home singing to Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald. We did end up watching A Christmas Story while stuffing our faces with lemon bundt cake. Quoting the movie all night, with the smell of pine wafting through our small living room from the real tree standing gracefully behind our couch.
What do you call nostalgia for something you never had? A memory of a memory of a dream that flickers in the back of your head like an old movie reel. It’s too fuzzy to make out the details, but something in the saccharine sentimentality soothes your soul. Icarus to the sun who falls because his wings are made of wax, and no matter how hard he tries, the sun can never love him like his father.
A memory of a memory of a dream that was never real, no matter how hard you wish it to be.
