The Unpredictability of the Past

Earlier this week I got a message from my Norwegian friend, Ragnhild, saying she was in Aberdeen on business and wanted to get in touch with Phil, a mutual Scottish friend. We all attended Stockholm University’s International Graduate School in the early 90s, before email was widely available, so many of us lost touch over the years.

Stockholm University was my home for over three years. Looking at this aerial photo of the campus sparked a ton of memories and brought on waves of nostalgia.

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day

There’s a saying that the past is more unpredictable than the future. We get nostalgic for the good old days partly because our memories are unreliable. We filter out the negative and hang on to the good stuff. My undergrad days? Best time of my life! Grad school at York University? What a party! My years in Stockholm? Such a great adventure!

My twenties were full of travel, fun, friendship and parties (and academics, almost forgot the academics)…but 20-something me was also self-absorbed, insecure, cynical, and moody. I was uncertain about who I was, who I wanted to be, and what the future held. When I really think about that time in my life, I realize that in the moment I was often full of self-doubt, unsure of what others thought of me, and more critical of others because of my own insecurity. I doubt I was as happy at the time as I remember myself being.

There were also scary moments during my time in Sweden – a mentally ill stalker, a shooting on campus, a health scare, close calls – that get erased from the picture when I put on my rose-coloured nostalgia glasses.

When I look back, I recall hours spent in deep discussions over tea and kanelbullar (Ska vi fika? was my favourite Swedish expression). I picture walks in the woods, days at the beach, the Forskarbacken pizza place, floor parties. Somehow, it’s always sunny in my memories. It was rarely sunny in Stockholm.

One thing almost all those happy memories have in common is that they include friends. For my 30th birthday, about a year after I’d returned from Sweden, my sister wrote dozens of letters asking my friends to mail her messages and photos for a scrapbook she was making. It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever received. Unlike students today, whose every meal is captured for posterity, I have relatively few photos to remind me of those days, which makes the scrapbook even more special. [Remember when film only had 12 or 24 shots, about half of which were blurry or of people with their eyes closed. And we’d order doubles to share.]

This is a snippet from one of my favourite contributions. It reminds me that, even though it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, the shared experiences and social connections are what made that time so special.

Of that little world that revolved inside of Stockholm, I picture you in every round of the carousel. The four corners of a room that the long winter became. Even under the awning of an awakening spring evening confessing by the fireside. Campsite colored in flickering light watches the lengthening days betray the once never-ending nights. The diversions that helped endure a drawn-out year of study. It was always the shared havens of solitude that provided the respite needed to remind us; It’s only Sweden.

For the in-between hours there were always a few faces to brighten the days. You and Signe and Phil offering an experienced view of the challenges of juggling the work, the play, the time, and travel. Back on Forskarbacken, gathered around the white pine table or milling about the flaking green formica on the kitchen countertops. Chris and Ragn wrestling down the hall. A soccer ball scoots past the door. Backpack slung and bi-colored socks Phil settles in for a break between the greens and another game. Kanal ett, Kanal två, Twin Peaks. Buzz, locks turn and the slam echoes from the corridor. It’s your guess who’s the next guest on another low-budget evening in. Katie, Kirsten, Mattias, Francis, Signe/Malin. The cycle of visitors and those always there.

That description of our casual TV-watching hang-outs compresses time and takes me right back to that residence common room, in the same way a song or scent can transport you.

I also spent an alcohol-infused year in the Master of Environmental Studies program at York. Here’s a portion of a scrapbook entry that eloquently captured that year for me.

Yesterday I opened a shoebox
of memories – photos
of baseball games we couldn’t see
because somebody was sick
from the night before,
birthday parties at Chi Chi’s
Hallowe’en in a pink veil
with a bottle of beer,
the label half-peeled.
When were you behind the camera
or lounging in a corner,
quietly predicting,
smiling,
just soaking up the evening,
I guess.
When were you there
not there,
moving through my memories,
a braided river,
part of the crowd
united in its loneliness

Were you there
only because
you are part of my memories?
Was I because you remember me?

Victoria Station.
The driver is saying
do not leave
anything behind.
I collect my coat
and memories,
step off the coach
into the morning.

The nostalgia effect applies to the state of the world too. In the present, when we don’t know how things are going to turn out, it can feel like the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and we romanticize the past. My recent foray into genealogy reminded me that each generation of my ancestors had a tougher life than I did.

There’s a movie coming out that exemplifies this idea. It’s about a trad-wife influencer (played by Anne Hathaway) who is magically transported back to the 1850s. She gets to experience what being a traditional wife was really like. For those not familiar with the trad-wife movement, these are women – often Internet influencers – who’ve embraced a life of traditional gender roles, where the man is the provider and decision-maker, and the woman focuses on domesticity. I’m going to guess that Hathaway’s character learns that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

As adventurous and fun as my twenties were, I’m a happier, wiser, less cynical, person now. I’m more able to enjoy the moments when I’m in them. Those were the good old days…but so are these.

Last weekend, my Ottawa friend Joanna and I met in Kingston and went on an organized food tour. It started at 11:00 with margaritas and fish tacos and progressed to pizza and beer, pasta and wine, gelato, and pastries. It was a fun way to learn more about the city of Kingston and the restaurants in it. Did you know that Kingston is Cambodian restaurant capital of Canada, for example? Did you even know there were Cambodian restaurants?

Joanna and I often meet in Kingston, so we’d already been to four of the six stops on the tour, but we’ll be returning to the two we hadn’t tried on future visits.