Autumn in Charleston Road: the chestnut trees let fall conkers that land softly in spiked- green armour at my feet and the damp orange leaves slide in the sludgy wind. It brings me right back to age 7 in the kitchen, where my mother and I pierced and connected with toothpicks our enormous collection of chestnuts, forming lengthy caterpillars which we brought in the following day for the school nature table. There is no season with the same sting of nostalgia: Autumn, when things are beautiful and sad.
It’s awe-inspiring how memories morph as they age. Some become gentler, others omit details and there are those that change completely. There are moments when a smell steers me back to a cloakroom, or a relative’s house or a feeling of listlessness transports me back to my early teens. The Greek nostos (homecoming) and algos (grief) describe etymologically the melancholy that accompanies the return to that which was once familiar.
For many, our cub’s demise means leaving behind the familiar. Families on the beach in Australia some years from now might think back with a smile to the turkey they carved in Dundrum or to the icy plunge they took at the 40 foot on Christmas day. A young professional may return from their American job and wonder why the old ‘gang’ is scattered about, intermittently getting married and moving in different circles. In turn they might have to justify their new drawl and flashy smile.
I tried to capture nostalgia once. I was 16 and staying with my two best friends in a chalet in the snowy French Alps. I had never seen such beauty: snow-topped trees, slopes of endless white and a charming village where you went to get your ski boots fitted. ‘This is lovely’, I said to myself once; ‘nevertheless, right now I am feeling neither young or carefree yet possibly that is how I shall remember this experience’.
Of course, I fell into my own tautological trap: I am nostalgic about my rumination on nostalgia. Those very things that I didn’t focus on at 16 are those that capture best the part of me I miss. The freedom of endless pondering outside of an academic curriculum. The conviction that 18 was pretty ancient. How I had the same 10 or so close friends in my life every day and how the biggest leap was from transition year to fifth.
Yet there is also something extraordinarily comforting about nostalgia. While there is sadness in the sense of a familiarity that has become strange, there is also an immense reassurance in that very act of recognition. When we remember with fondness, we travel back to a time and mindset and when we become sad we do so because we had almost forgotten a part of ourselves. A chestnut bounces past me and I smile. Almost.
