Tag: nostalgia

  • The Thing About Progress…

    The other day, I was sitting with my dad and my uncle, and somehow we got to talking about cars. You know how those conversations go. One story leads to another, somebody remembers a car they used to have, somebody else remembers a road trip, and before you know it, we’re talking about the radios…

  • What Remains

    There is something strange about the way we think about cemeteries. We call them places of death. We imagine them beneath gray skies, wrapped in fog, their crooked stones standing like silent sentinels in the dark. Movies fill them with shadows and whispers, with footsteps that seem to come from nowhere. We teach ourselves to…

  • A Manual Selfie of Sorts

    A Manual Selfie of Sorts

    Self-portraits… a manual selfie of sorts. When the world gets quiet, my thoughts usually don’t. Today, they settled on the only subject I know from the inside out: me, and the journey that’s brought me to this moment on the third rock from the sun. No what-ifs. No forecasts. No reinventions. Just who I am…

  • No Batteries Required: When Play Meant Something More

    Yesterday, I saw something I never thought I’d see again—especially not from a high school student. I saw a group of teenagers playing leapfrog. Leapfrog. Not a phone app. Not a video game. Not some new social media challenge designed to last three days before disappearing into the digital abyss. Actual leapfrog—the same game kids…

  • Commencement Season: Tassels, Tears, and One Last Trip to the Snack Bar

    There’s something strange about graduation season. For four years, students spend most of high school counting down to the end of school—talking about summer, freedom, and escaping homework forever. Then suddenly, during the final few weeks, everyone starts walking around campus like they’re in the last ten minutes of a movie. People who normally sprint…

  • The Cookie with the Hole in the Middle

    The Duplo cookie—that round, flower-shaped, sugary piece of goodness with a hole in the middle and a soft ribbon of filling tucked inside. Anyone who is anyone knows this tasty treat. The Duplo cookie never asked for attention. It didn’t need frosting that shouted or colors that competed. It just sat there—round, slightly crisp at…

  • Life Is A Notebook

    I came across this idea the other day, and it stayed with me longer than I expected— the kind of thought that doesn’t just pass through, but settles in. Maybe it’s the way we hold onto moments—like scraps of paper, like old notebooks tucked away in drawers. Every now and then, something reminds you that…

  • Rain, Memories, and Mischief

    Not too long ago, I wrote about memories and how they have a way of popping up when you least expect them. Maybe it’s because I’m — how shall we say — a little older now, but I find myself looking back more often, sifting through the good, the funny, and the slightly bruised. I…

  • Nostalgia on a Stick

    Growing up, summer in Calexico had its own soundtrack—somewhere a screen door slammed, a dog barked three streets over, and a radio played Ramón Ayala so faintly you couldn’t tell if it was next door or two blocks over. The air already smelled like heat—dust, sun-baked asphalt, and tortillas puffing on the comal in someone’s…