The Nostalgia Of Newness

Words: Hannah Herrera

My eyes scream for the sight of an amber-orange leaf fluttering to the ground, for a hillside draped in arboreal splotches of honey-gold and blaze-red, for an ethereal glimpse of my mom’s favorite ginkgo, a gentle explosion of pure yellow every October.

I yearn for unfurling dogwoods and divine breezes, cicadas calling the sun to its home and the flit of fireflies escaping searching little hands, the tremor of candlelight and whiff of a cinnamon miracle rising in the oven.

It’s been two autumns now that I haven’t seen a colored leaf, except for in the blurry American countryside mural at the menú del día restaurant three blocks away.

I flung myself far from home, all the way across the wide gulf, and found a new home, a home where seasons are only metaphors and I have to correct myself every time I say last summer or next spring, because nobody knows what it means.

They say seasons remind us of the beauty of change, but what about the change of leaving that all behind?

What about the change of leaving everything you’ve ever known at the other end of a phone call, of trading belonging for you’re not from here, and exchanging monthly markers of movement for years of climatic constancy?

What now will be the outward manifestation of my inner alteration?

The explosive growth of spring, the thriving of summer, the slowing of fall, the resting of winter?

What now will be my new cadence of change?

Natilla y buñuelos for winter, the songs and sprinkles of semana santa for spring, the sun picante on my skin for summer, the yellow guayacán for fall?

I am a mix of the rhythms of my raising and the lilt of my living. 

Sometimes a breeze will tickle the branches at just the right tempo, and my bones believe I’m back, leaping and shrieking with my brothers into a sharp pile of raked-up remains.

Sometimes the cry of a far-off frog launches me to a humid dusk, hands full of dripping ice cream, laughter tripping through the thick evening air. 

Sometimes the sting of hot chocolate on my tongue lifts me to giggles and marshmallows and cookies and films with the friends who formed me. 

And all the time the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen whisper of the blooms of my childhood.

Maybe the seasons sing to us of the certainty of change. 

Perhaps they preach to us the nostalgia of newness. 

Maybe they show us both things can exist at once— the burn for familiarity and knownness, and the thrill of transformation, the glory of making a fresh way in a new place, of opening your heart to new love, new faces, new tastes, new smells, and yes, new rhythms, of piecing yourself into a collage of all your beloved left-behinds, and all your magnificent yet-to-comes.