remember when

For me, changes in weather often spark strong feelings of nostalgia. The past two days have been the first truly spring-like days around here, and with the (relative) warmth and sunshine has come these random pangs of what I can only call nostalgia.

Nostalgia never ceases to intrigue me. I have a love-hate relationship with this bizarre phenomenon. On the one hand, I relish the feeling of re- experiencing or even simply recalling good from the past. On the other, nostalgia carries with it a sense of something lost. For me, nostalgia is most often a barely tangible twitch of longing for some good moment from the past. These are not usually well-defined moments. In fact, they may never have actually happened. I will simply feel a breeze or smell that springy wet-earth smell or the scent of burning leaves in autumn, and that sensory trigger creates a simultaneously satisfying and dissatisfying memory. I am both happy that I was once so happy and a little sad that things never seem quite as good now as I think they once were. (This happens a lot at Christmastime.)

Today, however, I recognized something new. I think that I sometimes have feelings of nostalgia directed toward the future. Today, while I was searching for missing books, I experienced the most overwhelming feeling of delight and longing for that time I took my boys trick-or-treating. It took me about 3 seconds (which is really longer than it sounds) to realize that I don't have children. I was feeling a sentimental desire to relive something that I may someday live but have certainly never lived up to this point.

Before I go on I should mention that I have no idea where trick-or-treating came from. I know it's spring, not fall. I guess the mind works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, this got me thinking, and I'm pretty sure that I've felt this before. I feel definite pangs of nostalgia over things like driving my kids to a soccer game or sitting by the lake reading with my spouse. And I know that you're probably thinking this sounds a lot like just wistfully imagining future possibilities. But it's different. It carries the same complicated, paradoxical emotions that come with typical past-oriented nostalgia. It's as if something triggered longing for a future that cannot ever come to pass or one that might but probably won't.

I honestly have no idea what to think of this. I'm just observing my experience. I'm a little curious whether anyone else has ever encountered such a feeling. But mostly I am just musing.

{Totally unrelated side note: Some one just handed me a pair of scissors blade first. I thought every one learned in preschool that you don't hand anything blade first; apparently not.}