Reminiscences of a Docker Operator

Docker takes a while to get used to.
I suggest you use the official node image.
Maybe make a Dockerfile that installs nodemon for live reload of your code
and use a volume to mount your code directly in it.
Use docker exec <container> bash to get a shell to your dev env
and you have yourself a fully isolated node env.
npm install to install all depencies.
As long as you keep that container around, it will keep the stuff you installed with npm, but if you destroy the container, it will go back to the state of the image.