Faithful and Virtuous Night Lesson Plan

In "A Summer Garden" the speaker compares dust to a "persistent/ haze of nostalgia that protects all relics of childhood." What do the relics of childhood need protecting from? What does this characterization of nostalgia as a "haze" imply both about childhood and about how memory functions?

Students may notice that the speaker wipes the dust first from their mother's face in the photograph (for example, why does their mother's face in particular need the protection of the dust?); they may also pay attention to the author's choice to include the adjective "persistent," and what this persistence might subtly imply about the speaker's relationship with that nostalgic haze...