When we first saw the trailer for Inside Out 2, I remember my 16 year old telling me she wanted to see it in the theater. Going to the theater isn’t something we’d done a lot over the years, choosing to watch new movies at home where we could pause and rewind or fast forward where necessary. Also, new movies were not a given in our household; it tended to take several viewings of the various trailers available to build up to the idea of watching a new movie. Instead, we tended to stick to rewatching favorite films and we were good with that.
The teen years brought a bit of a shift, especially for the 16 year old, and she decided she really wanted to see the new Inside Out 2 in the theater. Unfortunately, despite her 14 year old sister’s plan to try the big screen viewing option, the sensory experience was miserable for her from the smells of foods and the volume levels of the trailers and eventually the movie itself. We waited a long time for Inside Out 2 to stream on an available service so we could do one of our family movie nights, and when that finally happened, it hit all the right marks for each of us, from the introduction of the new emotions to the anxiety attack Riley experiences to the expected and well-executed funny moments. Perhaps one of the favorites here was the brief cameo appearance of Nostalgia.
While Riley’s storyline hit home with my two teenagers and they both had strong reactions to different moments, Nostalgia remains a go-to conversation focus here. Recently my 16 year old asked if they were too young to reminisce, if you were supposed to be older when you indulged in that practice, to which immediately I responded there were no rules regarding reminiscing. Honestly, I love to listen to them recall favorite moments from when they were younger. And maybe it’s because birthdays are approaching, but they have definitely been enjoying swapping memories that make them laugh and others that, well, make them cringe.
As a family, we were living in Massachusetts when our 16 year old was born, and although we moved shortly after she turned three, she has some vague memories of our Massachusetts apartment. But the major memories they share come from the rental house we lived in upon first moving to North Carolina in 2012 when they were 4 and 2. Being there for four years gave them plenty of opportunities for their own sweet Nostalgia character with her cup of tea to collect recollections to bring to mind now that they are in their teen years and every now and then they will stroll down those forming memory lanes of theirs.
I enjoy the moments when I am privy to their meanderings down that lane, when they laugh about something that delights them or when they remember something that mattered to them emotionally. Of course then there are their reminiscences that cause them to laugh awkwardly or uncomfortably as they cringe at something about their younger selves. I am fairly certain that is the way of the teenager, a rite of passage of sorts, being hard on the younger self. But I also wholeheartedly believe they will one day be more like the tea-toting Nostalgia in Inside Out 2, recalling those now-cringe-inducing moments with a tenderness, the emotions of those times wrapping around them gently and bringing a smile to their hearts.
Being further along the memory lane journey, I have enjoyed that shift in my own recollections, the years softening my judgment and the sharp edges of memories. Like my teenagers, I look back at their young lives and I cannot help but smile and laugh. I recall the challenges of those times, too, but even those have been reshaped by time and memory. They are also altered by the place we are now; one can never overlook the ways progress and experience filter our past adventures (the good and the not-so-good ones). I love seeing my teenagers through the eyes of my own tea-drinking Nostalgia character. She’s got a great view of just how awesome these two young women are based on just how amazing they’ve always been.