Member-only story
Back to my Future?
Nostalgic longings for my childhood home
Scenes from Childhood
As long as I can recall, I have always enjoyed reflecting on the past by constantly asking my mother, “Do you remember…? Do you remember that trip to Longwood Gardens when I was three? Do you remember the time that the Lins stayed at our apartment? Do you remember the party…?”
Sometimes, she would answer yes, adding to my happy recollections. But at other times, when she wasn’t in so pleasant a mood, she would snap, “why are you always thinking about the past? The future is more important!”
But I was already a backward-looking child. After all, my favorite movie then was The Sound of Music, a film set in 1930s Austria. This was also about the same time that I had begun to discover Western history, if only on a pictorial basis. As Mom cooked in our tiny, windowless kitchen, she would put me in the adjoining room where I found a stack of her Time-Life art books in a brown shopping bag.
I pored over them on a daily basis, never tiring of the same paintings. Even though they were mostly black and white, I wondered why people didn’t dress like that anymore. I admired the long flowing gowns and robes, as well as the sumptuous furnishings, and scenic landscapes that one simply didn’t see in the present.
