Remembering feelings

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Do you remember how you felt at a particular time? I don’t mean just remembering that you felt happy, or sad, or excited, but actually feeling that same feeling again? Sometimes I experience this, especially now that I have children, I find myself re-visiting experiences from my childhood that I haven’t had for a long time and it brings all those feelings back. The girls are keen to embrace the Christmas season so we have started putting the decorations up. Just looking at the tinsel on the tree makes me feel exactly as I felt when I was about 7 or 8. We always had the Christmas tree in the ‘front room’ rather than in our everyday ‘living room’ so we were not there looking at it all the time, but in December we would often light the fire and spend some of the evening there reading or maybe playing games or doing some sewing or something. But then later my parents would go back to the living room to get on with the usual stuff - preparations for the next day or whatever - and it would be bed-time for me. I would leave the light and warmth of the living room into the cold dark hallway to go upstairs, and as I passed the front room I would see the tinsel twinkling in the firelight and it gave me a special feeling. I can’t even describe it, a sort of mixture of a little excitement, anticipation, a hint of fear at the darkness, and a sort of sparkle of magic and mystery - a special Christmassy feeling. ‘Remembering’ isn’t really the right word for this; more like ‘re-feeling’ - do you experience this? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2020.