Author John Koenig coined the word “anemoia”: a sense of nostalgia for a past you never experienced. You might get a tingle of anemoia when you see Currier and Ives prints or Bedford Falls. “I’m homesick even though I was never there.”
I think anemoia explains the success of Thomas Kinkade, who painted soft-focus pastel landscapes so warm and inviting you want to crawl into them. That golden glowing cottage in an alpine glade feels exactly like my cozy childhood home, except I always lived in a tract house in the suburbs.
Even as a child I experienced deep nostalgic longing, despite not having lived long enough to feel nostalgia for anything. The song “Those Were The Days” by Mary Hopkin, in which a woman wistfully recalls happy nights singing and dancing in a tavern with her friends, invoked a haunting melancholy in me, and I’d never been inside a tavern. It’s based on a Russian folk song because of course it is.
I’ve now lived long enough to feel authentic nostalgia that can hit hard, especially for times that are long gone. I’d give anything to be able to knock on my grandparents’ door and be invited in for Sunday dinner, sit and talk with my Mom, or relive a day with my daughters when they were toddlers.
It keeps me mindful that someday these will be the good old days I would give anything to revisit, and makes me grateful for the people and places I have now.
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