The sepia tones of nostalgia

My friend Mitchell Hadley, one of the best writers I know, published an interesting piece yesterday about looking back on your own past. In an instance of uncanny timing, he published it right as I remembered something from my own past: that 31 years ago that day, I graduated college. 

My first thought: “Holy cats! THAT was 31 years ago?” It only seems like yesterday that I was in the position of those youngsters who crossed the stage last Saturday.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt Mitchell’s point resonate. In his case, he was setting part of a novel in a time he lived through but was too young at the time to comprehend. This meant treating that part of the writing process as a research project, so the story’s backdrop would feel right and assist the story’s progress. In my case, though, I was old enough to comprehend the times I was in. (Since I was graduating from college, you’d sure hope so.) To me, the shock wasn’t going back to understand the era, but going back to remember what that time was really like for me – and in its own way, that was its own kind of research project.

There’s a disturbing tendency, the older you get, to view everything through the sepia tones of nostalgia, like every picture you’ve ever seen of Ebbets Field. You look back on Sunday dinner at your grandparents’ house, on goofing off with your grade school classmates, on going to the store with the money you’d earned from odd jobs so you could buy that thing you’d been wanting. Everything from back then has this warm glow to it. It makes you forget that at your grandparents’ house, the roast beef was stringy and the elders at the table were too absorbed in gossip for you to join in any meaningful conversation and the clank of silverware on the good dinner plates drove you up the wall. You forget that goofing off with your friends was a sink for the undiagnosed anxiety that was eating you alive. You forget that those odd jobs meant toiling in hot sun for hours, for what turned out to be not much money, when you think about it; you’d spend a day earning it, and it went in minutes on things whose appeal didn’t last that long after you bought them. Like Horace Ford, you’re reminded that your longing has paved over a lot of stuff that was pretty terrible.

And, what with nostalgia being delicate but potent, I have a similar tendency to think of my final year in college as this wonderful place. I’d finally figured it out, found the people I enjoyed being with, found purpose in writing for the school paper. For a time I even had a little romance going on. I had my interests and had parlayed some of them into research that won recognition. I had youth and good health. I was on the cusp of finishing this degree that I’d poured the last few years into. There was a deliciousness to those last days of the Spring 1995 semester, an anticipation. The world was never so warm, the skies were never bluer, colors never so vivid. It was Eden itself, and I was blessed and lucky, touched by something that would grow and bloom in me.

Or, at least, that’s the version that plays in my head, complete with soundtrack. All I need do is look back at the diary I kept that year, or look at the newspaper archives. Or, for that matter, just sit with my own mind and be honest with myself about what really happened. For nostalgia, delicate and potent though it may be, systematically cheats the past.

In reality? Yes, I had youth and good health, and I’d had success with my research. But that romantic relationship imploded because I could also be an immature and selfish jerk, and the hurt feelings I caused haunt me to this day. And for as much as I was eager to get my degree and get on with my life, I hadn’t lined up admission to graduate school or even lined up a job to carry me through. I’d been an excellent student, but when it came to everything else, I was all thumbs. 

That last week was indeed special. I remember the last chores I had to do, the increasing lull as things got checked off the list, that last quiet evening before the big event that Saturday. May 6, 1995 was indeed glorious, sunny, warm. There was the surreal feeling of finally getting to a big day and realizing how ordinary so much of it was. Dutifully we lined up in order, wearing those cheap souvenir caps and gowns, marched into the sports arena, sat through the standard-issue graduation speeches that were meant to inspire but instead marked time. Then, row by row, we marched up towards the stage, waited for our moment, marched across and shook hands with the dignitaries, accepted our diplomas, and then went back to our seats to sit through the rest of the show.

For a moment, there’s a glow. You look at your diploma, with your name on it (in ink!), and it’s real. You file out after the service is over and there’s the hugs, the congratulations, the last pictures together, the promises that you’ll stay in touch. (Sure.) Then your family takes to lunch at a slightly-fancier-than-usual sit-down place, since it’s a special occasion and everybody’s in their Sunday clothes anyway, and you start to get a feeling that the day is about everybody else but you. Then it’s back home for a few hours. Your best friend is coming home for the weekend, and you’ll visit for a little bit before you’re off to a party one of your friends from the newspaper staff is giving. 

It’s at that party that it really starts to hit you: this part of your life is in its final moments. You have a good time at the party, and you’re thankful that you were invited, and the host and his girlfriend are kind to you, but all these people speak a language you’ve never learned, are part of a scene that passed you by, culturally aerodynamic while you’re so square you may as well be an anthropomorphic cube. You were never a part of this scene, and now you never will be, and at a certain hour, you know you have to leave the music, the laughter, the fun of being young for these last moments, for if you don’t get home, Mom will be worried and Dad will issue one of his trademark stern lectures. You say your goodnights, promise to keep in touch (which never happens, of course), and as you start to walk through the dark back to your car, you feel that what you just left behind may as well have happened a hundred years ago.  

Yesterday’s brand-new graduate is today’s odd duck. Especially if you’re a first-generation student, with nobody in your family to understand what it’s like and no one to prepare you for what you’ll experience next. Sure, you’d known what the end of an academic year was like. But there won’t be going back in August to see folks again and resume the rhythms of your previous few years. And in a tiny town where you’re one of the few college graduates, you almost feel like one of the returning G.I.s in The Best Years Of Our Lives. Everyone’s looking at you as something unusual, if not exotic, for something you did, but they weren’t in it with you, so they can’t understand it as you do…but you’re also dealing with that adjustment, of something that had consumed your life and transformed you that has now come to a sudden end, and you don’t know what’s next. And that transition isn’t necessarily easy.

In my case, it certainly wasn’t. Oh, there was an initial burst of fun: going to my friends’ graduations, the three of us taking a mid-May trip to Disney World (still the only time I’ve been there), and some assorted mischief here and there. But that was short-lived. My lack of planning for what was next, along with a couple other circumstances, drove me into a depressive state that still rattles me when I think about it. Only force of will and help from above got me through it. And, yes, the following year things got better, graduate school started and from there came everything that followed, including this present moment. But, man, that year immediately after graduation…I would not want to re-live.

It’s the nature of memory, though. Our minds want to sand off the rough edges and remember only the happy things, the little vignettes and stolen moments. We like nostalgia because the present is uncertain, and with stuff from the past we know how the stories end. We forget that in those moments, though, we felt uncertainty akin to what we’re feeling now. Heck, just going back and looking at the newspaper from the day after my graduation day, what do I see? On the front page, people are griping about the price of gas going up. The Republican-controlled Congress is haggling over budget proposals, wanting to slash federal programs and give a big tax break to the wealthy. The U.S. and other countries are sparring over trade rules. A couple days before, there had been some diplomatic growling over Russia helping Iran. A prominent local resident had been struck by a truck and killed. There’s arrests, deaths, weddings, the whole nine yards. Change the dates and a few details, and what’s really changed? The anxieties of then aren’t too different from the anxieties of now, except we know how those of 1995 played out and in 2026 the damnable blessing that is the Internet has made it all so relentlessly instant, but it’s a reminder that no matter how sepia-toned my memories may seem, 1995 was not paradise.

I think of those days when I’m with my students now, especially those in their senior year, and particularly their final semester. They’re all full of excitement and anticipation. They’d take that diploma in a heartbeat if they could. It’s those times when I have to tell them: take in this moment. In some ways, things will never be better. As much as you gripe now about certain things, in five years you’ll look back on your life right now and you’ll get sentimental. Enjoy this moment while you have it, I tell them. Out in the real world, it’s gonna be different.

And in 30 years, you’re not going to remember it the same way.