The Meaning of Nostalgia

I recently met a guy named Neil who decorates peoples’ homes for the holidays.??He’ll do anything you want, create any image or any theme: Victorian, modern, neo-classic, Elf-themed, all-white.??Nothing is a problem for this guy.??For a price he’ll bring in the greenery, the lights and the sparkle, clean up after himself and even come back after the holidays to take it all down.??

It sounded great. Finally, someone to take away the burden of decorating for Christmas.??All the work, all the mess, all the hassle.??Sometimes decorating would take me an entire weekend, and more often than not, I never felt I did a very good job because it never looked like the magazines.??Neil was my chance to get it out of the way and over with. He was my chance for perfection.??We set an appointment.??

The day before Neil was scheduled to come, I hauled my boxes of ornaments up from the basement to give him a chance to see what I owned, that might fit the theme he picked for me, taking a minute to eliminate ornaments that were ugly, broken and too old.??

When I opened the first box, there lying on the top, was a yellow Power Ranger ornament with crooked legs, its right foot chewed flat.??We had given it to Tommy several years ago when every waking hour was consumed with Power Rangers and he told everyone that he wanted to be the Yellow Power Ranger when he grew up.??Last year when we were decorating the tree, he turned his nose up at this Power Ranger, put it back in the box and refused to let me hang it on the tree. But I did anyway, in the back where he couldn’t see it.??But I knew it was there, representing Tommy’s growth from Power Rangers to long division and crushes on girls.???

In that same box were six silver glass ball ornaments.??One was broken and wrapped in wrinkled, yellowed paper.??It was the ornament I dropped when decorating the tree with my dad the Christmas that turned out to be his last.??He loved these ornaments. Each year I complained they looked too old-fashioned, worn out and mottled, with so much of their silver coating lying loose inside that they made a tinkling sound whenever jostled or moved. But every year, he’d insist those silver glass balls go on the tree, as he told me the same story of walking to the five and dime with his mother to buy them when he knew she couldn’t afford them.??It was the middle of the Depression and his mom bought them because she knew it meant a lot to him to have something hanging on the tree.??

“These ornaments and a tangerine in my stocking were the only presents I got that year,” Dad said.??He told me it was his favorite memory and the best Christmas of his childhood. (The reason he told me there was a tangerine tucked in the bottom of my stocking every Christmas morning when I was growing up).??

I still remember my dad’s expression when I dropped one of these ornaments and how he prevented me from throwing the broken shards away.??He told me that it was ok, that he wasn't mad but that we should keep it to remember our time together.??As he wrapped it carefully in the tissue paper, he told me that even broken, the ornament still meant a lot to him.??So I kept it, moving it from his house to mine after he died, making sure I kept the pieces together as though one missing fragment would take away a chunk of my memory of him teaching me to slow down long enough to appreciate the taste of fresh chocolate pudding and the nuances of Frank Sinatra’s voice.

As I held that broken ornament, I realized this wouldn’t be the Christmas I handed over the decorating to someone else.??

I called Neil to cancel our appointment.??

When I was young, I spent a lot of time dreaming about how to get out of my house.??I longed for a richer, more complex existence with skyscrapers, corner coffee shops filled with people discussing heady topics, and men in tortoise shell glasses who drank bourbon and read Dostoevsky on the subway.??At 18, I finally got my wish, as I headed off to school and then a job in Washington D.C.??But ever since I slammed the door on my childhood, I’ve been trying to get home again. And every Christmas, that’s exactly where I go.??

And Neil might not understand.??

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