A Wave of Nostalgia

I've been sitting here for the past fifteen minutes or so with my hands hovering above the keyboard trying to find the way to write something that sounded vaguely coherent. Moments before, my breath was taken away. Nostalgia. It's like the wind was knocked out of me. Not so much in a painful way. But in a very real, something-touched-close-to-home kind of way.

I'm experiencing that strange feeling you get that seems to encompass you. To swallow you whole. More than a memory.

Watching The Celebrity Apprentice tonight I watched a Harlem Globetrotter spin a basketball on his finger. It instinctively brought me back to my childhood. My father used to do that. All the time. Seeing it on TV... tears were in my eyes before I even recognized what my mind was taking in.

It was a simple, powerful moment. Unlike a memory that's calling on a cell in my brain, this was nostalgia -- tugging on a fiber in my heart.

For those who don't know, my father passed away my first year of middle school. My parents were already divorced, my mom re-married, and truthfully my days of being a "daddy's girl" were long gone. He was a distant memory to me when he passed. I was angry at him. I was too young to know it's not worth hanging on to anger. I digress.

Tonight's reaction shocked the heck out of me. It brought forth such a deep, latent memory, that there was no way I could have seen it coming. It's been a long, long time since I've thought about my dad (biological) in this light. A long time.

I need to go now. In a weird mood. Still not too coherent.