Yet Another Rainy Day

My parents invited my sisters and me around for a barbecue over
the bank holiday weekend.  All very nice and a typical thing for a British family to attempt when it was yet another rainy day.  Not least as the food had to be cooked indoors because it was raining so much, and then as soon as we had finished eating, of course the sun came out.  So far, so depressingly normal for August in the UK.  But my mum also used the barbecue and family get together as an opportunity to ask us to begin to clear out all of our belongings that have accumulated at their house over the years.

I reacted with mock horror when my mum told us this was the plan.  But it’s only been twenty years since I’ve lived at your house, I said.  It’s far too soon for me to think about collecting any of the items that I have left there.  I simply don’t have the space for them in my small flat.

But she was right that it desperately needed doing.  My middle sister’s old bedroom has for some years now been the site where all of our childhood things have been lovingly placed (dumped) until a more permanent home can be found for them.  As much as that has seemed a convenient solution for all the years that have passed since we moved out one by one, my mum’s patience for this being a long-term arrangement has understandably worn thin.

So after having filled ourselves with the obligatory burgers and sausages from our indoor not-really-a-barbecue, my sisters and I traipsed upstairs to start tackling the inevitable.  And as soon as I opened the boxes to go through the things I had left behind for so long, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia and memories.

Books that I read and loved as a child, especially my collection of Horrible Histories.  School technology projects which at the time I thought demonstrated clear skill in metalwork or woodwork and pressed on my mum to have on display around the house, but when taking out of the packing boxes realised she was clearly practicing deep patience with my view of my creative abilities.  Wooden letter holder – I am talking to you.

But the things that impacted me most were the mementoes of university.  It is twenty years since I left my parents’ house to move halfway across the country to go and study, and I cannot now believe I have lived away from “home” longer than I had spent living there in the first place.  There were long forgotten about photos of me (with the longest hair) and uni friends looking so young and fresh faced, the course handbooks and letters from the dreaded Student Loans Company telling me how much money I would shortly owe them.  I even found a minute book from the university society where I served as the secretary, with all the notes I took from our committee meetings.  Meetings I can barely remember now.

Going through all of those things made me remember the girl I was twenty years ago.  What was she like as a person?  What were her hopes and dreams?  Have I, twenty years on, met those hopes and achieved those dreams or have I disappointed her?  Would she be proud of who I am today, or not want to know me?  Would she recognise me at all?  I almost did not recognise myself in those photos and in the words I had written back then.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” as L. P. Hartley wrote.  This is certainly true; even 2004 was a simpler time, pre-iPhone, pre-Facebook or Twitter, pre-Covid.  That girl in 2004 would definitely react and behave differently to how I would now in 2024.  Was 2004 me a better version of me?  Or have the life experiences I have had since then made me not just twenty years older but also twenty years wiser?

Maybe I am just romanticising the past, perceiving it as that foreign country.  We humans do seem to have a habit of remembering things in a way that suits us, either to allow us to perceive ourselves in a more positive light, or perhaps more likely for those like me on the neurotic side, in a way that makes us utterly cringe with embarrassment.

In previous centuries, nostalgia used to be considered a sickness, a serious mental health disorder.  It is easy to see how you could be swept up in the past, imagining how things used to be, and perhaps how things could be different if the version of you from twenty years ago had taken a different path to the one you actually ended up on.  It is undoubtedly not a healthy thing to be constantly dwelling on the past, whether you are wishing things could be like they used to be or regretting past decisions made.

Modern psychology, the pop version at least, tells you to live in the moment, “YOLO”, you only live once.  But after my nostalgic moment last weekend, I think there is a place to remember how things used to be, to bring out those things that remind of who you were, the idealistic young person of 2004.  As long as it is only every now and then and the rest of the time I keep my feet firmly planted in the present day. 

Maybe I should leave those mementoes packed in boxes in my parents’ house after all.  Sorry mum, I guess you need to keep them for another twenty years.