Futile Nostalgia Moment

Nostalgia. It's really a curse all dressed up nice. Yeah, you only remember the good stuff in life, but when it comes at you, it usually is unexpected and relentless, leaving you bedazzled and in awe of the memory. It never keeps itself on time to be ready in it's revelation when you are ready. There is no meeting halfway between the two of you. Once nostalgia hits me, it's like a torrent of bit memories flooding my head, reaching maximum capacity. I try and counter this with something else, trying to stay in the present, but it really gets futile quickly. Sometimes, it can be watching someone, or something or re-reading a book, or listening to music that all at once bombards your conscious with warm fuzzies. Nostalgia is like perfectly legal LSD.

There has been a moment in my life this year which I have not been able to shake. It's rather simple and mundane to most, but to this writer, it's a rather profound and moving experience. I try not to use the phrase I love You errantly. It's a sign of a culture wasting it's intelligence away when they casually toss the phrase around with about as much emphasis as hello. I don't want to drain it of it's meaning, or substitute it in the place of another inexplicable feeling I may have for a woman I am dating and I cannot think of a proper way to articulate it. I want it to continue to mean a profound amount of significance.

 
 I have learned as an adult that sometimes it's better that you show it in action, and it has a greater impact than any list of words or sentences you may put together. One instance was in late April of this year. I ended up surprising the girl I was dating, and pretty serious for, by cooking her dinner. Well, I heated up a platter of lasagna, a loaf of french bread, and canned greens, so it's technically not cooking, it's merely warming things to adequate temperature. The point of this is I don't really cook. I don't have a small stack of books following recipes to the tee. I'm the guy who navigates the easy route to sustenance. Bologna? I'm there with a side of pringles. Frozen dinners? I'm listening. The girl I was dating, she understood this about me being a cheap diner. She would notify me that this wasn't a healthy way to live long term etc etc. She would get a chuckle when I would look at the oven as if it were something completely alien. "You worked at a fast food restaurant for nearly two decades," she quipped one time. "It's stunning and sad that you don't know how to operate the oven and stove." "No one pays me by the hour for it," I replied, and then warmed up a can of lasagna in the microwave.

I would sit and tell her that one day, she would come home from work and smell dinner. She would just get all sarcastic or incredulous at the statement as a reply. I followed though with my promise though. Hustled together the items at Wal-Mart, brought a bouquet of flowers for this wide lipped vase she had on the kitchen table. Lit some tall narrow candles that hadn't been used since 2002. I carefully read the directions on the box, which in a nutshell is, take off cellophane place on oven rack after preheating to 450 degrees and wait for 20 minutes, or it's a rough approximation thereof.

When she crossed the threshold of the front door, that look she had on her face was pretty indescribable. There were no words to be said. I think she sensed just how much I cared for her in that instant, for the past few months, it had all culminated in this one moment, sitting in the oven cooling down. This was a great moment in my life, an act I performed for exactly one other girl in my adult life, and this may sound sad or pathetic that I've wasted more words and lines on something completely mundane like cooking dinner, but it worked for me. It's something I can think on when I don't want to think about anything but sleep. I can remember just the absolute silence we sat in, exception being some soft music in the background. The food tasted pretty well.

A week and a half later, she left me, and I haven't seen her since.

That's how life goes though. It's best to not think of the negative, but concentrate on the positive. Realize that you were "the man" in that moment. You were something akin to having an S on your chest, cape billowing behind you. It's good to keep this in your head as you sit alone and think what it is that went wrong and why you aren't settled as of yet. It's not me, it's you. I can think to myself.