As a passenger in my grandparents’ truck’s backseat, I was staring down the winding road, lined with antiquity brick buildings having rustic red roofs. I was thousands of miles away from my birthplace, friends, and everyday routine, yet so near my roots. As I was moving away from my present, it appeared that it was approaching my past. I was the intense feeling of nostalgia that Swiss Physician Johannes Hofer referred to as homesickness, characterized by a profound longing for one’s motherland (As cited in De Brigard). My grandmother’s candy-like familiar voice brought me back to reality. My grandpa was very proud of the soil on which my forefathers founded our home, laid our first foundation, and planted the first vine. We halted in front of the impressive iron gate with its paint slowly flaking off, allowing me to see the big brick home between its curves.
Eager to discover more, I opened the gate and began my trek through the untidy blades of grass. The air was packed with fresh fragrances as I eagerly absorbed the warm summer breeze. With my pulse thumping, I made my way home to find my past, which I was confident held the key to my future. I entered the vast room with the familiar hardwood flooring and dusty fireplace as grandpa unlocked the creaking wooden door. I did not know that I was going to peep into the richness of the past through a small window present on the wall.
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While surveying the house, suddenly, my gaze moved to the black and white portrait suspended on top of the mantel. I had a vivid vision of a young man standing next to a lady with a friendly-looking face and long strands of braided hair and wearing a welcoming smile across her face. Even though I had never spoken with or met that lady, I could not help but feel that we were connected in some way. Generally, experts associate going back in the past with suffering, pain, and anxiety (Routledge). But in my case, the impact seemed to be positive and joyful. Her kind eyes seemed to follow me as I went around the room, and my little interested hands ran over the dusty artifacts, the same curious hands that one day plans to carry forward the legacy my mother and her mother have left to me. My childhood memory of a black-and-white photograph of a young couple is vividly alive. It is my past and my origin that contain the roots of my parent’s home country, Georgia. It is embedded in my mind and entangled with my home of Cleveland, Ohio, by an eternal bond. Regardless of the vast distance between us, we still operate as particles of a quantum state, making an unbreakable connection of resilience and strength.
Works-Cited Page
De Brigard, Felipe, “Nostalgia reimagined”, aeon.co, 20 July 2020, https://aeon.co/essays/nostalgia-doesnt-need-real-memories-an-imagined-past-works-as-well, Accessed 24 Oct 2022.
Routledge, Clay, “A new view of an old emotion, or how science is saving nostalgia”, The Conversation, 19 Aug 2013, https://theconversation.com/a-new-view-of-an-old-emotion-or-how-science-is-saving-nostalgia-16658, Accessed 24 Oct 2022.
