We Used to Wait

I feel quaint now when I put mail in the mailbox (the sound of the mail hitting the bottom of the steel box makes me think, vaguely, of grandparents) or when I read a hard copy of the sports section at Pagliacci. These acts fill me, not vaguely, with nostalgia for what was likely the final zenith in American history: the 90s. But it's not just that, it's something more personal and therefore more important: I feel a nostalgia for my youth. In Greek, nostos means returning home and algos means ache or sadness. Mail and newspapers fill me with an ache of coming home. Writing an e-mail longer than a few sentences, an exhausting act now, and flipping through my last remaining CDs that have survived car theft and attempted sales at Easy Street bring my memory back to the home of the 90s: a home of youth and waiting. But the home is no longer there, and it won't ever be again, and I am no longer the same, and never will be. That is where the real ache is. Thinking about reading the paper in a diagonal splotch of summer light or browsing the CDs at Easy Street for an hour while the autumn rain fell or picking up the phone unaware without knowing who it could be: these wispy visions fill my chest with sad, quiet, humble air.