Top 10: Nostalgia

When I go to bed at night the window usually open. I like to be cool during the night and I guess it's also habit. I love me some fresh air! (even if it does make husband snore.)

Anyway, when I snuggle down there's always at some point (1.) A train going by in the distance. When I hear the soft toot-toot of the horn (I don't think trains have horns, you kwim though?) I get this twist in my stomach. It's familiarity and maybe also yearning. Comfort but a pang of aching. To me that's what nostalgia tends to feel like. It's happy and sad. The sound of a train on a summer night is so familiar to me being an ocean apart from the original memories make it so strange. - That's where this post is coming from.

2. Music: a huge source of nostalgia! Memories get attached so quickly to music. Happy and sad. This morning I made the "mistake" of watching this and now I have the song stuck in my head but also the memory of a dear friend doing the whole dance routine in a swim suit and tights whilst I laughed my head off. I love that!

3. Sweetpeas = my mum. Just thinking about sweetpeas takes me back to my parents tiny back garden. I can see her clipping some of the pastel coloured flowers and making a little posey to wear to church.

4. Air: I know, this one is weird. But you know when you've been far from home for a while and you get back and the air is different? It smells and feels like 'home'? I hope someone understands this because last time we were in Scotland my oldest brother thought I'd gone mental for talking about gobbling up as much air as I could. There's seriously nothing like filling your lungs and your belly with air from home. When we come back to Seattle I can feel it too.

5. The first snow of winter. That means Christmas is soon who doesn't feel nostalgic around Christmas? Traditions. That's what it's all about! The musky smell of the Christmas tree when it first comes out the box. The music, the decorations, the treats. The good cheer.

6. Wearing a new outfit for the first time. It doesn't happen very often for me now that I have a whole brand new outfit but when it does it makes me think of weddings, baptisms, first day of school, Easter...

7. Husband's aftershave. When he wears the same aftershave he wore when we first met I'm 18 again. I remember the sensory overload during that first kiss, holding hands for the first time, that last breath in as he'd let go of me to leave for the night. Yum.

8. When something random catches your eye: In Urban Outfitters a couple of weeks ago I spotted some shoes and had that tingle run up my spine. Husband looked at them and said "they are so you and these ones are totally Emma." I was like "Yes, those are totally Emma!" The style of shoe, the pattern, everything was Emma and there I was in the middle of Urbn happy to be remembering Emma and sad that she's so far away but SO happy to have that memory.

9. Dreams: The other night I had a dream about a friend who's parent's are friends with mine. It was so weird. Even though I'm a good few years older than him in this dream we were doing weird things you only do in dreams ie. drawing on all the walls in the bathroom with soap. But when I woke up I was hoping it had been real. It wasn't but I was still happy he'd snuck into my dream. It was happy like old times.

10. Random things: We were watching Sabrina The Teenage Witch last week and it was the episode where Sabrina moves to Paris with her dad. He magics Britney Spears over and she's singing and stuff and at the end Sabrina and her are talking and dancing. Sabrina does this crazy dance move. And right then I remembered watching that same episode with my little sister, Beki and her doing that dance move at youth dances and stuff. It always cracked me up and I could never do it without falling over. Happy times that I'd totally forgotten about!

What makes you nostalgic? How do you describe nostalgia? Is it that same happy and sad thing?

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