Nostalgia has a scent

I was sorting through my old emails yesterday, and 2007 me resurfaced as surprisingly and refreshingly as a cool splash of water on my face. This "me" came alive through my writings much more vividly and almost, unrecognizably, than from my pictures of a year ago. I still look pretty much the same on the surface this year and last, but my writings belie a girl of such difference that I had to blink to recognize myself. She seemed much more uninhibited, naive, hopeful, idealistic, dotting her little emails with markedly more exclamation points and breaths of exuberance. She refreshed me. She embarrassed me. She reminded me.

She seemed like a little lamb, slightly lost without her shepherd but overall, good-natured.

I have an old box full of diaries and letters from a long time ago, from the time when hand-written letters and stickers and ribbons were such a happy part of my life. I remember waiting for the postman to deliver a letter from friends far away, and then excitedly ripping open the envelope and uncrinkling the pages inside. I still do receive letters, but now many are bills and useless advertisements, yet another induction into the adult world. Most of my communique are done online, through email now, but yet there is something sweetly nostalgic and magical about receiving a letter in the mail, almost as if it carries the very care and time of the sender wrapped within its seal. Holding the papers that they touched, running my fingers over the words that they inked -- there is a connection there that cannot truly be replicated though email.

Nostalgia has a scent, an unreplicable and haunting scent.