More Saudade

Sometimes I feel so stained by the past I think nothing new will ever occur again. I speak of the romance of saudade but lately wonder if saudade, really, is a fate worse than nostalgia. Nostalgia’s intoxicating spell carries you firmly to the past yet saudade cruelly promises the return of yesterday. Worse, the older I grow the more the people around me and I seem to view each other through the lens of our memories. I wonder if we can ever see each other as anything other than persons relative to our past.
Sometimes I want to leave this city, this coast, this Pacific, specific feeling all tied up with the mountains, the beaches, my mother’s family and 'five generations of caring'. I think perhaps I’ll find my father’s family and switch; live the rest of my life with my other family. I’ll go from the West Coast to the East Coast, from WASP to working class Irish-American, three aunts and uncles to six, Protestant to Catholic, Helens to Patricks. But then I realize it would all still be relative. Relative to the West. Relative to my Mother. Relative to Helens and country clubs and 'five generations of caring'.
And so I stay. And I return to saudade. Hoping, at least, what I miss may someday return.