In the past, when I’ve been in distraction mode and unable to be fully in the present, my mind tends toward planning and future thinking. And counting. I realized as a young adult when I found myself counting colors or dollars or people in the room, I was actually really stressed and distracting myself. It was an unconscious coping mechanism.

For the past few months since the pandemic started, there hasn’t been much to plan for and the future is so uncertain that thinking about it doesn’t reduce stress, it increases it. Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about the past. Past friends and lovers and houses where I used to live. Pets and my mother. This July was the 10th anniversary of her death.

They say that current losses trigger emotions and memories of past losses. So in times like these we can feel overwhelmed with loss and grief. Now at 3 am when I wake up with a busy brain, counting has been replaced by “what color was my childhood bedspread?” or “which wall was the kitchen sink on in that house 25 years ago?” This technique has been much more effective than counting sheep (or old boyfriends).

Last weekend I was searching for an old photo and I was poring through photo albums and boxes of pictures. I found myself reliving past vacations and hikes and weddings. And lots of friends and family, many who are gone now. I felt the tight, stinging sensation of sadness and it was so thick that I couldn’t push it away for one more second. I became inconsolable. The sadness of losing my first dog began to meld with the loss of my mom. The memories of my good friend Alice Loving (who performed my wedding ceremony) piled right on top. All of these losses happened more than a decade ago, and they felt as fresh as the recent loss of my dog Leo who died early in the pandemic.

The next morning as I prepared to teach my Sunday morning yoga class, I wandered around the house feeling drained and empty. I was searching for a word that was on the tip of my tongue. It was more like a concept that I couldn’t quite put my finger on...and then it hit me. Nostalgia.

I looked up the definition online. “A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically from a period or place with happy personal associations”. Not quite. I remembered something about the Greek, and looked again. “Nostos, meaning home or homecoming plus algos, meaning a pain or ache”. That was closer.

I talked about it to my class on Zoom. My assistant Shauna (who I miss intensely) typed in the chat box, “it was from Mad Men”. Bingo. That was it! An episode about an ad campaign for the Kodak slide Carousel. I looked up the quote on my iPhone (the killer of wonder, as my friends and I call it). I read it out loud at the end of class and choked out the last line through my tears. I thought I’d share it and that it might resonate for you:

“Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” Don Draper - Mad Men