A Fancy Glass of Lemonade

My wife and I were discussing a conversation she had overheard while shopping last weekend. We boys stayed in the car while the girls went in to get whatever it was they went in to get. It must have been the fabric store or Kohl’s because I cannot remember which and there isn’t a Bass Pro Shop in Evansville. I had the AC and satellite radio on, the latter a result of us still mooching off of my in-laws account, so we were content to stay put. When Carrie got back to us, put Lucy in her car seat, and then buckled herself in, she started telling me that in the checkout line two young ladies were talking about recently walking by a Build-a-Bear. This apparently made them think of their earlier years. She couldn’t remember what exactly was said, but what sank in was that the duo used the word nostalgic more than a few times. “Oh yeah. It’s so, like, nostalgic.” “I know, right?!” replied the friend. “I just love little nostalgic things like that.” What made it worse was Carrie’s put-on valley girl accent while trying to quote them. She really put it on in order to annoy me. I could picture - and hear - it clearly. Good grief.

How in the hell do you have nostalgia for anything when you basically just got your learner’s permit, still require OTC zit cream, and can’t remember what you had for lunch. They most likely Door-dashed Chick-fil-A and Starbucks, but I am only grasping at straws. Straws they don’t give you anymore because Mother Nature has apparently had hospice called in for her due to those pesky plastic pieces of convenience. God knows Starbucks is king of the universe when it comes to virtue-signaling, unless Target is open and it’s June. (Disclaimer: People should also know that when I go duckling or baby seal fishing, I like to save my plastic can holders and chuck them into whatever body of water I may be trespassing on that day. My personal best is three for six.) And call me old fashioned, but I would think you’d need more life experience under your belt before you can get all warm and cuddly over seeing a talking teddy two weeks prior. Yet, in a world where too many things are assigned value via Facebook posts, Tik-Tok trends, or one of the other seemingly endless Internet challenges, we are not very deep as a collective species.

I read an article this morning that discussed “sad-fishing” which is basically attention-seeking done with a smartphone or computer screen. I thought sad-fishing must be a pitiful day at the pond and the only things you catch are a sunburn, perhaps an old boot, but what do I know. In sad-fishing, a person cocoons themself in their hoodie while wailing and about why life is so terrible. You are alive and in America! Get some grit and a job like the rest of us. I am sure some of them are honest but come on man! If we get invaded by China or Russia, we are screwed. What are we going to do? Throw iPhones at them? Attack them with week-old, empty bowls of Ramen? Maybe they could post videos of themselves being offended by said foreign invader, try to get them and their Kalashnikovs canceled, and they will just run away? Only time can tell.

The majority of the people I am addressing are competing for du jour victim-status, the “Hey, look at me mentality.” So, of course, we just throw terms like nostalgia around, which isn’t the worst thing in the world. It just gets my curmudgeonly mind going. In a similar way, some of my students tell me about the videos they watch. “Hey, remember that thing from fourth grade…” Most of the time it’s a video of somebody else reacting to another person’s video where they’re reacting to someone else doing something funny. You can’t make this crap up. It’s like the film “Inception”, but only if you’re an idiot and can’t appreciate Christopher Nolan’s genius. A sad reality is that the little tech-junkies are going to vote in the relatively near future. We have all seen “America’s Got Talent.” The judges use love as a modifier for a plethora of things ranging from domino rally displays to yodeling bloodhounds to recently homeless opera sensations. They love everything they see. Combine that with tear-jerker back stories and you might as well be watching Hallmark Channel. It’s as vain and shallow and both are as predictable. How can you love any one thing when you nearly literally love everything else? It undermines that which authentically deserves our attention.

Sorry. Let’s get back to this idea of nostalgia. All of this went through my mind over a couple of silent minutes. I rolled my eyes and asked Carrie where else we needed to go for that trip. Before she could answer, I rudely interrupted myself and said “You know what…” She said, “Oh no. I shouldn’t have said anything.” She was anticipating one of my rants. But because I actually calmed myself or at least pondered things before I spoke, yes anything is possible, I repeated “You know what? Sue and Tom’s was a great visit wasn’t it?” “It sure was,” she said. Now there is some nostalgia.

Aunt Sue and Uncle Tom are my great-aunt and great-uncle on my father’s side via Gramma Harris, she and Sue being sisters. Aunt Sue and Uncle Tom are beloved family members who, since I was young enough to remember, always looked the same. Aunt Sue is a retired seamstress and once owned a cleaners business. She is a warm and gracious host and if you aren’t comfortable at her house, that’s your own fault. She makes the best lemonade and her house always smells like breakfast in the best way possible. Uncle Tom, after years of breeding cattle (cattle to cattle- nothing weird), horse working, and general farming, doesn’t get around very well and has a cane to prove it. Sometimes when he sits down I hurt just listening to him. He is of that generation where you just get things done. His laugh is classic and genial. If you take a minute and listen to one of his stories, one wouldn’t be enough. That’s where I found myself a few Saturdays ago when my family and I were getting ready to leave their new home just outside Orleans, Indiana.

It was a bit of a reunion that started because a distant cousin was supposed to come to town to see some gospel singers in concert. Exciting stuff right? Gramma and this cousin had agreed that it would be a shame to let her visit be wasted on just the five or so of them. So, they did what any Midwesterner worth their salt would do and planned a pitch-in. The result was about fifteen of us getting together and gorging ourselves on the best food on the planet and then talking about what was new with everyone. My cousins had just been to the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, North Carolina and we discussed their visit. It made me imagine Andy and Barn sitting on the porch with nothing else to do except maybe talking about getting a bottle of pop or taking a nap. Time always seems to slow down in Orleans, too.

At some point during the day, my daughter was taking in Aunt Sue and Uncle Tom’s home. She’d never met them and was finding out what we all already knew: Sue and Tom’s house is a cross between the coziest country home and the museum of fine china and antique knick-knackery. I am talking baby dolls, beautiful glass of varying color and shape and density, hand-stitched quilts, and other various breakables. Lucy, who is the definitive toddler in her gait, was trying to grab anything she could to play with, break, or make us think she’d break. She is too darn cute to get mad at, especially when she moves as much forward, backward, and laterally as she does bouncing up in between steps. It’s like one of those paddle ball games with the elastic attached bouncy ball that no one can do without hours of practice. That is, she’s not immune to the law of gravity but will bop around in about the same way as the bouncy ball. She is also doing this other thing right now where she’ll be in her high chair and look at you with a one-and-a-half-year-old poker face and slowly turn over her half-full plate right onto the ground. She must get all of that from her mother…

At any rate, I turned my back for five seconds and she’d picked up some pink glassware that is as old as time itself and is handing it back to me. It was at this time that Ian sees what she’s doing and says, “Oh nice, Lucy. You want brother to get you some lemonade in that fancy glass?” I could not help but smile, partially because they made themselves at home, which is what Sue would want, and partially because not much had changed about the place, except the place itself. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago, Aunt Sue and Uncle Tom moved less than a mile south into another home that was about half as big and with much less of a yard. They are content with it, as they are still close to most of their family, but I was worried it wouldn’t feel the same. Driving from Hope to Orleans when you’re little is an epic trek, barely two hours in fact, but when you get there you are at ease and do not want to leave. The older house sat atop a hill, had a great view, wood fireplace, basement where the kids ate at get-togethers, huge yard, a few hundred acres outside of the yard, and a pole barn with a finished loft to find mischief in as well. It was full of love and warmth and was heaven. This was my first time visiting them in their new home. When we got there we were crammed in so tightly that we had to take turns to get second helpings. It was like a game of human Tetris. But, we were all there and that’s all that mattered. Also, Sue had kept her knickknacks and all of the decor that made her new place feel cozy. It still smelled like her cooking too. I was relieved and should not have been so worried.

When Ian asked Lucy about that lemonade in the fancy glass, I was immediately put back on the porch of Aunt Sue’s one summer when she was watching me. I was probably eight or so. She has the same carafe to this day and was using it for the pitch-in. It made me smile in a way that I haven’t in a long time. Something about Ian asking Lucy that question and Aunt Sue pouring the lemonade really put me in it. It’s not like it’s some secret family recipe. It’s just lemonade for crying out loud. It’s from a mix but she puts real lemons in as well. It could have been the wet summer heat and general thirst to some degree, but to me it always remains a special memory, simple and almost reverent in a way. It spanned thirty years and was actual nostalgia. Nostalgia in the most real and pleasant way possible. I am most grateful for it.