Page 25 - Contrast1991FallCarpeDiem

Nostalgia

My great-grandmother's victrola ... so ageless. The melo-
dies would tinkle from the great veined hom. The music was
faded and soft, just as the memories I once saw in her round,
thoughtful eyes. Securing myself on her lap, with my legs
dangling on either side of her, my curious little fingers wan-
dered across the bright, colored glass beads that wound
around her neck. Strong hands supported my chubby arms as
I almost toppled to the floor. Bouncing back to the even
balance of her gentle grasp, a baby's chuckle escaped my lips
as my three year old eyes looked at my reflection in her tiny
wire rimmed glasses. Barely a smile curved her lips as she
took me in; the passing of time had marked her face so
deeply. Pride of generations I could have seen if time had
brought me such experience at three years old. I needed her
loving time-worn care, her touch, as she needed to take in my
youth sprouting vigorously from her creased hands.

Outliving the doubts of the past and taking a strong hold on
the life she had lived for so long, allowed her to enjoy great-
grand children. These great-grand children bore her own
character with the vivacity that showed in their glowing blue
eyes, strikingly like her own. I felt bewildered by such an
elderly person when I was in my babyhood.

As an older child now, I feel just as bewildered at such a
beautiful fragment of the past caught in the changing future,
as my great-grandmother was. Only now, her memory evokes
a nostalgic love for her life, that the passing of time has now
brought to me. I think of the music that the Victrola once
played and fully believe that it is still playing the same song
in her ears. This, being beyond what I may hear now, still
resounds in a place in some niche of time awaiting me.

Kristin Vick

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