“Ah, sorry, professor, I wasn’t paying attention; with the gentle wind flowing through the window, bringing with it a soft temperature between winter and summer and convecting away the heat from my body through my scratchy and thick jacket, carrying with it so many memories of days gone by, just how could I pay attention? Uh… could you repeat the question?”
I don’t talk to very many people—I’m a bit of a shut-in—but it truly does seem that some people just don’t care about these experiences. Perhaps the number is less than what I’m guessing, especially since I don’t have much basis to guess upon, but I cannot discount that at least some people don’t care.
My father seems to be one of them. I have wondered about asking people older than me whether they feel nostalgic about the age I’m at now. Nostalgia is something that’s often referred to in terms of childhood, yet does it stop there? I want to ask someone, but I don’t know who would care enough to have even thought about it.
This kind of weather comes about only twice per year: in the summer the days are all scorching hot and humid; in the winter the snow is deep and freezing; yet in the days of spring and autumn, the world is in the middle of the two extremes.
It seems that many people think only of the extremes—the hottest temperatures, the driest lands, the deepest snows, the rainiest days.
Yet…
What about those days in the middle?
It brings back to me memories of when I was little. “Little” is a vague term for me; it can mean anywhere from birth to about sixteen years old, but that’s beside the point. Here I refer to the days before I realized how bad I had had it. Innocent days, I suppose.
When I was little, living in the second house I had lived in (and the first that I remembered, since my family moved out of the first one when I was two years old), the neighbors had a crabapple tree, and I distinctly remember picking up the crabapples to investigate. I felt them underneath my fingertips. I don’t remember what was going through my mind, but I knew that I had felt wonder at the blanket of fruit around the tree. And, during then, the weather was just the same as it is now.
I remember too that my biological mother and I had gone to pick up my brother from his friend’s house and once we got there it took much longer to leave than little-me could bear, so at some point I played chess with the friend’s sister. The weather was just the same as it is now.
I’ve never counted how many days there have been like this and I don’t think I shall. I could, of course, whilst allowing some estimation for the past, but something in me tells me that it’s not right. I fear that it shall leave me bitter in the distant future—“Oh, so many shallow snow days have gone by and so few remain! What point is there to life if I should not have many left?” I may say.
The point is that they happened.
The point is that they are happening.
The point is that they shall happen again.
And I’m glad.
“Ah, sorry, grandkids, I wasn’t paying attention; with the gentle wind flowing through the window, bringing with it a soft temperature between winter and summer and convecting away the heat from my body through my scratchy and thick jacket, carrying with it so many memories of days gone by, just how could I pay attention? Now bring me my prune juice, I’m thirsty!”
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