Nostalgia Trip

Getting to the heart of the matter

“You can never go home again, but the truth is, you can never leave home, so it’s all right.”—Maya Angelou

Christmastime stirs in me the deepest and most palpable feelings of longing and nostalgia that I have ever come to experience.

If I stare at old photographs of myself, from what seems like so long ago, I marvel at the pure eagerness and absolute zeal I had for being part of every celebratory element of the winter season—pouring tinted beeswax into quart-sized milk cartons to make candles for my neighborhood friends, tossing long strands of silver tinsel over the branches of our living room Christmas tree, drinking chocolate Ovaltine out of the vintage Santa mug, endlessly rearranging the manger-bound figurines in the Nativity set.

I have come to really appreciate the holidays even more now because I get to reminisce with my brother Duane about all the things we still remember from those hazy days of childhood—from the colored lights strung on the front of the cottage-style house we grew up in, to hidden presents in the linen closet, eating sugary cookie dough on the sly, and wondering what mom would float next into her lime Jello Christmas molds (hopefully not sliced celery or cubed carrots).

I can’t help but feel a little bit jaded now, a bit broken over the idea of Christmas.

I search for some kind of faded sentiment in the old Hollywood movies—Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby singing about falling snow in a Vermont-bound train car in White Christmas, or a devout Ingrid Bergman, dressed as a Dominican nun in The Bells of Saint Mary, or a young Natalie Wood repeating, “I believe” in the back of a car, until she spots the home of her dreams in Miracle On 34th Street.

All of that unadulterated faith is bound up in our faces in those enduring photographs.

I went to Catholic school for nine years, and was convinced that all the angelic orders existed, and with the archangel Michael watching over me, I was invincible. With great devotion, I read The Lives of the Saints, holding every word, every detailed miracle, to my heart. I layered a prayer onto each rosary bead in school, knowing, knowing, knowing, that devotionals could bring on real acts of grace.

Now, as a grown adult man, whenever I watch the Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Stella describes her sister Blanche to Stanley, tears come to my eyes, as I remember that very innocent, very transparent boy I once was. Stella says of her delusional adult sister, “You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was as tender and as trusting as she was.”

So now, with a deep sigh, if I choose to once again, take my somewhat distorted, sepia-colored nostalgia trip, I can still visit that younger version of myself, and calculate all the ways, I am still that shy adolescent, and all the ways, he is still hiding (and still, sometimes, hurting) inside of me.

Another dated, ubiquitous photo of someone blowing out their birthday candles.

In this case, it’s my teenaged brother Duane making a wish, and me, nine years younger, biting my lip with an uncertain grin on my face. But what strikes me the most in this blurry picture, is how I’m tenderly leaning into my sibling, shoulder to shoulder, completely trusting that my older brother will sincerely protect me, defend my mistakes, and always show up for me the way a real brother is supposed to. Ah, there’s that tricky, slippery, loaded phrase, “supposed to.”

I’m projecting the 2024 version of myself onto the past—and it’s only one part of the truth, not even the full truth—definitely not the full picture. So I keep probing.

Being adopted as I am, I am always searching for the real meaning of family.

Adoptee author Jeanette Winterson sums it up for me in her Substack blog, Mind Over Matter, when she says, “Being adopted means that you never will be DNA-like, genetically like, your parents. That creates a semi-detached reality, even if you love them and they love you. That was not how it was for us at home. They were bewildered by their child and I was bewildered by my parents. What was I doing there?”

I often felt that same awkward detachment growing up, that ever-widening gulf between my younger self and my adopted parents.

And so began my great adventure into spontaneous traveling.

Creating my own pasted-together atlas of the world, teaching English for a while in Paris, France, then short stints through my university exchange program, in Vienna, Austria; Tallinn, Estonia; and Florence, Italy—always with the intention of trying to discover what family signifies, not in blood ties so much, but in iron-strong bonds wrought by my chosen family.

In the early eighties, British singer Paul Young had a continental hit with his remake of the Marvin Gaye song, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home.”

For awhile, like the protagonist in that tune, I drifted about different European cities, adopting different personas, mashing up time into a picture postcard travelogue, seeking balance between living as a perpetual, itinerant wanderer, while also needing to secure a close familial community—challenging the traditional notion of home as a singular place, versus home as an idea that abides within—a notion one holds to philosophically, more than strictly just the safe environment where there is a felt kinship.

But as Maya Angelou contends, “you can never leave home . . .”

Then comes the moment, when I open up my childhood photo file on my computer, and I begin to once again engage with the long shadows and hungry ghosts of a sometimes simplified and illusory nostalgia trip.

Author Joshua Fields Millburn, writing in his online blog, the minimalists, reminds us wisely that, “Nostalgia is a rose-colored rearview. Not only does it falsely represent the past, keeping us clinging to a two-dimensional version of life that didn’t actually exist, it dampens the present and clouds the future.”

That really resonates with me, but to a point. It’s impossible for me not to look back. Even more challenging—how can I resist the fatal undertow of such a deep immersion into the complexities of the past?

For better or worse, we carry our homes with us, wherever we go.

For me, those dusty rooms sometimes still feel a bit cluttered with unresolved conflicts, heaps of things I didn’t say, holding on for too long to the shame of living a repressed life, during a time when to be openly gay felt worse than death. So for so many years, I dissolved into overwork and sought the solace of the open road.

I think it’s important to know why we travel, what the benefits are and how we can seek out destinations that reunite us with our deepest, most authentic self.

So I keep spontaneously traveling, and sharing this travelogue here with my wonderful readers, my familial community—because it anchors me in the present moment, keeps me engaged in each breath, each step inward and outward—but always with the intention and desire, to move a little bit forward, a little bit closer, to what feels perfectly natural, perfectly safe, like home.

Resource

Having grown up both gay and adopted, Jeanette Winterson’s essays and stories have been lifesavers for me. You can engage with her right here on Substack (see link above) or on her official website.

(All photos courtesy of Gerard Wozek or through an alliance with Creative Commons)