Nostalgia

Suddenly, I am overcome by a powerful feeling of nostalgia: some quiet afternoon in my childhood, when the street outside the house was still and empty. I swear I could almost hear the rustle of the plants in the small garden in the front yard; the hush of the warm, afternoon breeze; the clip-clop of the pony pulling an empty calesa.

A lazy afternoon, indeed, as I stand in the middle of the narrow driveway, then seemingly wide and full of possibilities. I remember standing there, waiting for the darkness to fall so I can finally run into my mother's arms. But that was going to be sometime still. So I stood there and sensed the quiet. Even then, I had the sensation of self and the world.

I have no idea why it has rejected me all these years. Maybe, as a friend has pointed out, I had not learned to let it touch me even as I learned to sense it.