Coming home is always a nostalgic experience for me. I think it has something to do with the fact that I haven't really lived there since before I went to college. Even on my summer breaks I never moved back. For a couple years my bedroom was exactly as I'd left it on that rushed and tear stained morning, the one where I moved into my first dorm, and said good bye to my childhood. There were the important things I knew I'd want to have with me forever: some picture albums, a jewelry box, memories that I couldn't wait to display proudly at MSU. But there were other things, some even more important, that I felt comforted knowing could live in my bedroom "forever". Every time I came home I would pull out a high school dairy, and laugh at my naiveté, or hold onto the limp body of Toto (my favorite stuffed dog, of course), tightly, and revel in his smell that always stayed the same. For years nothing changed in this bedroom, the room I'd had since just before my 2nd birthday. But things have to change eventually, and before I graduated from MSU, my room did too. My mom started making small changes that I'd notice every time I'd come home to visit; sometimes there'd be a pile of high school folders on my desk that my mom would ask me to sort through, or I'd notice that a photo collage wasn't hanging on my wall anymore, but instead was on a shelf in my closet. I never minded really, because I knew that it wasn't really "my room" anymore. Of course when mom moved a very large treadmill in, one that took up the entire center of my room, I did note to her with some humor that it seems inevitable that parents will always turn their children's rooms into a gym. She didn't appreciate that, and by the next time I came home the treadmill was in another room. Eventually when I moved East I took almost all my photo albums, and most of my childhood diaries. I emptied out that bedroom more than before, and it was left looking like nothing more than a spare bedroom, with a few childhood reminders of my time there. The other day I was looking in a box filled with assorted photographs for a few very specific pictures. I'm home right now for Ashley's wedding, which I must say, I can't believe is only a week and a half away. I feel like she's been engaged forever, even though it's only been just over a year. As I was looking for those specific pictures I kept getting distracted by other memories, most of them from high school. If anyone had watched me they'd have been sure I was smiling at a private joke, so big was my grin as I sorted through picture after picture. Afterwards, I found myself wandering around my room, opening drawers in my vanity and peeking at some left-behind jewelry. I noted that I do this every time I'm home. It's like I'm looking for a piece of my youth; something to hold on to for a moment to feel the way I used to feel. The ability to look back on our past through rose colored glasses is a funny thing. I live with a 15 year old, and I often note how one couldn't pay me to go back to my teenage years. And yet, sometimes I long to have so many opportunities before me again. Would I make the same choices I did?
I hope so.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. I'll be enjoying it for the remainder of my trip.
