I am a deeply nostalgic person. I mourn my childhood homes, feel deeply for the stuffed animals that have been dismissed to the corners of my closet, and wish longingly for those golden, unattainable “old times” that people recall so lovingly. My goal for the special issue was to find authors who could articulate that indescribable longing and love in their own unique ways. With Andy’s, Kate’s, and Amanda’s contributions, I believe this issue captures and holds those feelings of hiraeth. These authors have worked with more passion and respect than I could’ve hoped for. They made me laugh, cry, and sit with hiraeth in exactly the ways I was looking for authors in this issue to make possible for the reader. Future readers will be lucky to discover first-hand the lived experiences these authors write about with such tenderness and care. My heartfelt thank you to Amanda, Kate, and Andy for helping me bring this issue to life. Your essays remind us that we are connected by our shared love and longing for what no longer exists outside the pages you’ve so devotedly crafted for Oyster River Pages.
—Kylie Hoy
Creative Nonfiction Intern
His balance had been off all week. He’d been tired. There’d been a lot of pain. That week had been one of the bad ones; it started beautifully with the band concert but slowly deteriorated from there—both his and mine—joy and wonder turning into pain and sadness. During that week, watching him struggle, I was suddenly reminded of myself. That same small, uncertain boy who couldn’t make sense of the world? I saw him in my father’s eyes, in his steps.
Read MoreBut you’re in your last semester now, and like jumping forward to your view from the future you suddenly realize you’re going to miss this place and these people. This epiphany manifests itself as a painful drop in the stomach, like being kicked. At this moment, you aren’t ready to go back to Columbus, to lying on the floor in a hot attic. Back to waitressing, back to labor, rats, trash, crowds, the horrific speed of city life, back to reality. Grad school has come and gone too fast. You spent too long looking for a river that you never noticed the lovely curving lines of the creek. You took too long reaching for a camera and now the picture escapes you. Just another sweet memory passed by. And now you must return to where you were before.
Read MoreMy existence, though, did not begin in 1988, the year I was born. It began in 1962, when my grandmother was pregnant with my mother. While my mother’s foetus was developing within my Popo’s womb, eggs in my mother’s ovaries formed. One of them would be part of the future me. When Popo migrated from Malaysia to Singapore in 1965 and bought a piece of land in Lim Chu Kang through the recommendation of a distant relative who had made a success of it in this nascent country, I, a secret of the future, was also there. This is my history to tell; it is also not my history.
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