Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a strange phenonemon.  For me at least, that bittersweet flooding of the senses can be brought on by the  most arbitrary of things.  There are certain sounds, sights, smells and tastes that are guaranteed to send you hurtling back to a particular place in time.  A kind of bizarre deja vu in reverse.

Today’s bout of nostalgia was brought to you courtesy of Yogi Sip.  Like I said, arbitrary.  Here’s the thing with Yogi Sip – strawberry flavour to be specific.  When I was a kid, to be given Yogi Sip was a huge treat.  So much so that I always expect it to be way more expensive than it really is when I buy it now – it is permanently embedded in my brain as a luxury item.  My gran would sometimes buy it for us and then the race would be on….who would get to drink the Yogi Sip out of the special glass. Of course there was a special glass.  It lived in my gran’s fancy glassware cabinet, and on the side of this glass, a horse pranced.  Well, we all know that when you drink strawberry Yogi Sip, it coats the inside of the glass and turns it pink.  In my clearly already vivid (and odd) imagination, this meant that the horse was now galloping through a misty sunrise.  The things little girls are into.  The point is that I am now incapable of drinking strawberry Yogi Sip without finding myself immersed in the sense of sitting on the floor in my gran’s lounge, hoping to get to drink out of the special glass.  And since my gran was such a huge part of my life growing up, it’s nice to get to visit again.

Yogi Sip is of course not the only random thing that gets the nostalgia going.  When I went to live in Ireland many years ago, two of my friends made me a care package, and one of the items was a body wash from Woolies.  Fast forward to last year when I cracked open a new bodywash from Clicks and suddenly found myself steeped in the memories of my first month in a new country.  I couldn’t figure it out at first, until I remembered that care package, and realised that the two body washes had the exact same fragrance.  The smell of the ocean was what they were aiming for, but for me there is so much more inside that bottle.  I buy it all the time now, and not just because it’s a great product.  Every time I use it, I am transported back to a time that was amazing and incredibly difficult all at once.  It makes me miss my sister more than usual, but it brings back good memories of living in her house in Skerries.  All that, and a fabulous exfoliator too!

There are so many other things.  The almondy taste of marzipan is my mom making Christmas cakes and giving us each our own ball of marzipan to eat – in hindsight this was probably a great way to get us out of the kitchen!  The smell of smoke is epic nights at Splashy Fen. On certain cold, clear evenings in Winter, I am suddenly walking down Grafton Street in Dublin, rather than leaving work in Durban. Music is a prime culprit of course – I have a thousand great memories tied up with the Springbok Nude Girls, but as soon as I hear Genie, it is a bright Summer day, school is over for good, Varsity hasn’t started yet, and life is full and happy.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has these moments.  But I think that’s enough exposure of the sappy side for one day.  I’m off to drink another glass of Yogi Sip.