musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

What’s done is done


‘Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there.’ -remember that poem? It kind of reminds me of my childhood fantasies of things that might be if I could just wish hard enough. Things that could have been, if only I could remember the details.

The distant past has always been like that for me -sepia-coloured, warm and fuzzy like many of the cuddly toys I can barely remember even if I try to pin down individual ones, or specific locations where they seemed important. And sometimes, even if I managed to rescue a vague example, my recollections were called into question when I checked with my older brother.

My father worked for the railway in those days and so we used to take the train across Canada each summer to visit grandparents.

“Remember when the train stopped at that little station somewhere on the prairies and Dad took us along the platform to see the Steam Locomotive that was pulling us?” I was talking to my brother when, many years later and in our dotage, we both happened to be in a reminiscent mood.

He nodded, but warily as if, once again, I remembered something different from his own recollections.

“The engine was like an angry god,” I continued, enthused with my description of the memory. “With the steam leaking from the hoses, and the noise it made as it waited impatiently to start moving again, it seemed barely able to contain its rage.” I smiled at the metaphor I’d conjured. It was the only time I’d ever seen a real steam locomotive up close, and soon after that, diesel engines which didn’t require coal or frequent scheduled water stops to quench their thirsty boilers, ensured I’d never see another. “It was so amazing to stand beside a hissing, soot-covered giant with dad there to protect us,” I sighed, remembering how safe I’d felt holding my father’s hand.

My brother stared at me for a moment, his face puzzled, his mind racing to find the proper words. “Amazing…? You were terrified, G! Dad had trouble holding on to your hand; you kept screaming and trying to leave. In fact, the only reason you didn’t manage to get away was because mom came along and cuddled you for the longest time… Remember her yelling at dad…?”

I shook my head in disbelief. “That was just because the engine was making so much noise… And anyway she always hugged me a lot.” I smiled again. “More than you at any rate…” And we both laughed; some memories are more accurate than others.

But, if recollections can be flawed, surely there can be even greater danger to assigning emotions to them or, for that matter, actually believing them; believing that the world actually did feel different then; believing it was a simpler time, with simpler questions, simpler answers. Nostalgia it is called (apparently from the Greek nostos: return home, and algos: longing, or pain).

Once you’ve left something, can you ever go back, though? Things change; you change; times change, and if you try to revisit it, you must inevitably confront a different reality -subtle or otherwise- from the one you remembered. And to think it was otherwise is naïve at best, but more likely just mistaken. As a Russian saying has it, the past is much more unpredictable than the future.

So, does it ever make sense to wish we were ‘back in the good old days’? I happened upon an interesting book, by  the cultural theorist Svetlana Boym, ‘The Future of Nostalgia’ that has much to say about nostalgia and its history; a more accessible treatment of the subject, however, is a brief article in the Conversation[i]. It would seem that in the 17th century, nostalgia was felt to be a sickness, a curable disease; but we have moved on from there: it is now considered a less curable modern affliction, offering false solace from the constantly changing  world of today. Nostalgia promises refuge, but in fact only offers doubtful memories…

Some suggest that nostalgia can even be linked to childhood and a longing to return to a fantasied state of innocence: a time  before responsibility, before problems and violence and before knowledge about loss and death[ii]. Indeed, even the toys we choose for our children are influenced by our own memories of that childhood. Nostalgia distorts them in favour of our own imagined pasts; unfortunately, there is no idealized time frame to which, even if it were possible, we could ever return without being disappointed. And anyway, the experiences of children have always been affected by historic shifts, social inequities, and emotional conflicts. So why should we privilege our imagined memories?

I thought back to that conversation I’d had with my brother, wondering whose version was more accurate. The train journeys we used to take when I was a child have set the stage for many an adult attempt at recreating them on my railroad trips throughout the world. So, surely that variety of nostalgia has served me well; surely those were rooted in a healthy evolution of memory scraps.

But then, in a later conversation, he reminded me of another of my memories which he had been similarly unable to substantiate. Our parents had taken us to a movie -it must have been when I was very young, because I was adamant that what we had seen was in black and white. He just rolled his eyes that my memory was that bad. But what he objected to more, I think, was my interpretation of what I’d seen.

I have no recollection of there being any storyline in the movie, just of squirming in the uncomfortable movie theatre seats and then, suddenly aware of what was happening on the screen, finding myself sitting on the railroad tracks and seeing a gigantic steam locomotive racing towards me, and then over me, as if I were merely a piece of paper lying between the rails.

I suspect that would just have deserved a derisive chuckle had I not (I think), declared that I had experienced that same scene before somewhere. My brother, however, insisted that it was the first movie I’d ever seen, and that  the train had been shown in full technicolour. There were no TVs in those days, and no home movies, or things of that sort being shown in Winnipeg schools then. I could not possibly have seen anything like it before.

It was only a few years later that an explanation of the movie surfaced in my still-developing brain when an American woman (who had been the subject of hypnotic regression), claimed reincarnation from a 19th century woman, Bridey Murphy from Ireland,.

My brother was sure that a miserable bookworm like me had borrowed the idea from a popular book published by Doubleday in the mid 1950ies. Of course, I had read the book around that time, and it no doubt could explain my seeing a train roll over me in some former life… But I think that may be taking nostalgia a bit too far. And, unlike the soft, cuddly memories that nostalgists seem to crave, I would have little desire to revisit that particular episode… if I had been reincarnated, I mean…

I’m more drawn to the times when my mother would make apple pies on autumn weekends, and give me an extra slice because I’d finally cleaned my room. Or was that a fantasy as well?

Are you allowed to pick and choose nostalgias?

[i] https://theconversation.com/nostalgia-for-childhoods-of-the-past-overlooks-childrens-experiences-today-183805?

[ii] Ibid.

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