Thursday, September 6, 2012

Five Crazy Things: Sense Memory


Barbara: Even if you haven’t read the novel (and, sadly, I have not), like me, you’re probably familiar with the  “involuntary memory” phenomenon made famous by Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past: the one where inhaling the fragrance of freshly baked little cakes known as “madeleines” suddenly brings him back to a very specific (and lovely) time in his childhood.

We all have vivid memories triggered by sense-experience. What first five (lovely) memories do you recall?

1. The smell of a warm field of wildflowers brings me back to ambling through a warm field across from my house on a sunny day when I am 12.
2. The smell of apples in an orchard brings me back to a road trip through the Okanagan Valley when I am no older than 3.
3. The sound of a car signal ticking on a dark drive brings me back to those nights in childhood when I would be hovering near sleep, lulled by the rhythms of the motor and my quiet family around me.
4. A baby’s head. Of course—the sweet heads of my own babies.
5. The smell and taste of grilled fish brings me instantly back to my honeymoon in Portugal, sitting at a beachside café with Phil and eating the most delicious grilled sardines ever, washed down with fruity, chilled sangria.

Deb
1. The smell of the mimeograph machine that I used to use in school—hot fresh smell of the ink. Takes me way back.
2. The smell of "kiddie" lipstick in those play makeup kits. 
3. The boy's baby head. Yeah I have to share that one with Barb.  Perfect. 
4. Lilacs, lavender, and wild raspberries remind me of Granny and Grandpa.
5. Plasticine—wow. 

40 comments:

  1. PLASTICINE! OH WOW!
    (Barb where do you get these delicious topics?)

    1. The smell of the earth when it rains for the first time takes me back to our trips to this beautiful hill-station we used to take every year. And the place was so foggy we couldnt see anything but enjoyed the moist feeling everytime we walked through the foggy paths.

    2. Smell of paint or nail polish! Mmmmmmmmmm

    3. A Barbie doll...ALWAYS reminds me of all of my toys. (also reminds me of Toy Story)

    4. A Soft toy. Recently When I was looking at old pictures, my mom said I had this soft toy, a bunny which I carried everywhere I went. Ever since she mentioned it I cannot look at any soft toy and NOT think of my bunny!

    5. An ink pen. Always reminds me of my fifth grade teacher. She ALWAYS insisted us on using ink pens.

    6. Smell of flour, "ghee" (Its kind of like an homemade butter) and someone making 'chapatis' (Its like rotis...IDK if you know them) reminds
    me of my aunts old apartment and the chapati rolls she would make for me. Yum!

    7. Smell of poster colours remind me of my painting teacher.

    8. An egyptian mau always reminds me of my aunt's cats!

    9. The smell of spirit and band-aids remind me of my pediatrician!

    10. PLASTICINE!!! Always reminds me of the fun I had with them in school :D

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  2. Wow, I was JUST thinking about this the other day: how certain sights, sounds, smells, can take us back to older times. And Barb, a honeymoon in Portugal?? Sounds like heaven. Love me some good sangria too! :D

    1. The smell of home. I can't describe it, but it's just a woodsy, outdoorsy, open smell. It's more noticeable now that I'm not there very often, but it still hits me as if I've never left.

    2. Hearing the peepers outside late spring/early summer. They'd go on for hours!

    3. A wet spot on a bed or couch makes me think of this one kitty we had who would come into our bedroom and he would just knead and knead and knead and purr, all the while drooling!!! He'd soak all the way to the mattress! We called him Pokie.

    4. This is more recent, but anytime I hear music with Irish flutes or anything like that I immediately go to that last scene in Lord of the Rings when Frodo is about to leave for the Undying Lands and he's saying goodbye to all his hobbit family. <3

    5. Murphy's Wood Oil. I can't stand the smell of it but it always makes me think of home.

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  3. 1. The smell of a horse barn with the hay, grain, sawdust, and even the manure because it's all I've ever known. One of the first surfaces I probably crawled on was a barn floor.
    2. The smell of the ocean and the beach where I grew up. I went back to Long Island after over ten years of being away and as soon as I got to the beach it was overwhelmingly familiar.
    3. The smell of a pipe. My father smoked Camel cigarettes and an occasional pipe but I can almost picture him in his chair smoking that smelly old thing. I still miss him
    4. Old Spice, it's what my husband wore and I swear sometimes when I'm having a hard time coping with things I get a whiff of it from God only knows where.
    5. The smell of babies after a bath which I'd forgotten until my granddaughter came into my life. Funny the little things you forget.

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  4. For me, I have a lot of associations with music.

    1. Right now, Odin is listening to some Slovakian music (in Slovak), and just the sound (lots of violin) reminds me of my dad's tendency to listen to his Ukrainian music in the car - because that's the only place he could listen without complaint. Also, listening to the Bee Gees reminds me of dad, and puts a smile on my face.

    2. The smell of curry spices cooking - reminds me of my mother-in-law.

    3. The smell of snow mold - yes, it's stinky, but it reminds me of spring run off.

    4. The sound of crunching snow - growing up, trekking to the Big Pasture to do some tobogganing...

    5. The sight of a chipmunk/squirrel - reminds me of saskatoon berry picking out in the field...

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  5. I woke up all growly, mean, and unexplainably snarly this morning -- launched my day in the baddest of bad moods. Didn't help that kiddo was the same and dawdling to boot. Maybe it's the weather? I'm gonna have to find someway to reboot my day before I get down to practical matters or nothing's gonna go right. A short nap? An outing of some sort? I dunno.

    Anyway, now I come on here and read this post and realize y'all're about to make me cry. Not sad tears. But, choked up and sniffly, nonetheless.

    Damn.

    OK, let's see:

    1. That perfect swirl of salt water, seaweed, sunblock, and hot, white, sunbaked sand that is the beach on the Gulf of Mexico on the Florida Panhandle. (Yes, to me at least, that's a distinctive smell. Atlantic and Pacific beaches smelled different enough to be different to me.)

    2. The song Possession by Sarah McLachlan: Whenever that song comes on spontaneously (I can't have clicked on it, it has to just happen like on the radio or playing when I'm in a store), it is May 14, 1994, again. I'm in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at Oz (a music store) with Brian and the woman he was engaged to at the time. It's sliding from afternoon into evening. Earlier that day, I'd graduated from university. All cap and gown and pomp and circumstance. We're at Oz and waiting for it to be time to go to the movie theater to see The Crow for, oh gosh, I think that was the 3rd time. lol And, later, while we're at the movie, one of the biggest, loudest, most right-on-top-of-me thunderstorms I've ever experienced happened. It was the loudest thunder I've ever heard, and the storm lasted a surprisingly long while. And, the power went out, and the theater was full of people. But, it wasn't a bad scene. Everyone was in great spirits and just rolled with it and had fun with the weirdness. Possession is university graduation day.

    3. There's a smell I call "Grandmama's house." Every now and then, I'll catch a whiff of something close enough to trigger the memory and make my mind travel. I usually stumbled across it someplace like a small, rural diner on a country highway. It's a magical mixture of the smell of a kitchen with an old linoleum floor, the lingering hint of the frying of okra or squash from the last big meal, a hint of the dry cat food in the bowl between where the table sat and the washer and dryer, the farm soil clomped in on my Granddaddy and uncles' boots, a bare touch of the scent of grease brought in with my Granddaddy and uncles from the workshop out back, hay, and a hint of clean laundry. The smell instantly supplies the sound of the loud clock in the den TOCK TOCK TOCK'ing and the bang of the screen door on the back porch. All the better if it's winter, and the smell brings forward the sound of the wind whistling and howling through the screened in back porch and adds a note of what I can only describe as the smell of cold winter brought inside on my Granddaddy and uncles' coats.

    I'll write the other 2 out in a little while. I'm spent.

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  6. I have a hard time with the fact that strangers live in Grandmama's house, now.

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  7. 3. Lightning bugs flitting a foot or so above the grass as a warm, clear summer evening begins to slowly darken make me time travel to my Aunt Sue and Uncle Junior's house which was behind the hen house and across a pasture from my Grandmama's house (the other side of Arkansas from where I am, now). I'm around 6 years old or so, and my cousins and I have been catching grasshoppers in jars. And, Jimmy called them hoppergrasses. And, absolutely everything in my whole world was safe and right and perfect and happy - purest purity.

    4. This next one is so rare and ethereal that it's hard to describe. I have to be down South. Down deep South. Even here on the Arkansas-Missouri stateline, I'm too far north. I think it might be because the trees and shrubs are wrong. Also, the light because I'm at a higher parallel. About as far north as I've known it was a neighborhood between campus and downtown in Tuscaloosa. But, anyway, sometimes, oh so very rarely, I will be walking in an older neighborhood with brick homes built in, ohhhh 1920's - 1940's, and the light has to be just right, the sun just exactly so, and the cloud cover just exactly so, and the trees, magnolia trees, camellia bushes, and all the greenery has to be, yes, just exactly so. It's a tingly, magical, otherworldly confluence of variables. Suddenly, I'm back in my dad's parents' yard in Pensacola, and I'm a little bitty girl. I'm walking around the yard with my Granddaddy, and his was the greenest of green thumbs. The whole yard was a vegetable and flower garden! And, I'm playing with the roly polies that crawl around the stepping stones. And, I'm hoping the tommy toe tomatoes are ready for picking. And, I'm thinking how fun it is to climb the big, tall brick steps to the back door.

    It's hard to explain, and it happens very rarely. But, there's something about the perfect green, the perfect light, and the textures, shadows, chimneys, and spirits of old brick houses that will transport me back to my paternal grandparents' house ages toddler - 8 years or so.

    Corollaries: To this day, green and white Krispy Kreme donut boxes, particularly those containing glazed with chocolate icing, make me smile because they mean Granddaddy. When I was a wee little girl in snuggly feetsie pajamas, whenever I'd spend the night with my paternal grandparents, the next morning, I'd wake up to Granddaddy having gone and gotten us Krispy Kremes. Seeing a Krispy Kreme box always makes me smile and feel a little ache because I miss my Granddaddy.

    Also, to this day, the throbbing hum and the particularly humid scent of the cold air that comes out of a window unit AC on a hot summer day is my paternal grandparents' den.

    More to come.


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    1. The dripping A/C reminds me of my girlfriend next door. ALWAYS dripping. Felt pretty good on those HOT HUMID days. :)

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  8. Yay another 5 things!!
    First what is Plasticine???

    ok for my 5..
    1. Smell of Candied sweet potatoes. My Gram makes these and they are my favorite food : )
    2. Seeing the Safety Town T-shirts. Safety town is a program we have where when you are about 5 you go to everyday for about 3 weeks and learn to cross the street safely and wear a healmet and ride a bike properly. It is a whole little town created with stop lights and makeshift houses all decorated to resemble a real town. They make sure you stay on the right side of the road and are not afraid of the police and firemen. When you graduate the program you get a bright red shirt with a stop light pictured on the front. The shirts look the same from when I went through the program almost 15 years ago. Seeing those shirts on the little kids around town always makes me smile.
    3. Ok I know you said lovely memories but while at the park recently I couldn't help but remember falling off the equiptment when I was little. I fell like 3 or 4 feet down and pretty knocked up. So the park kind of reminds me of that but then again I do love the swings there so happy memories are there too.
    4. Pumpkins! Smelling pumpkins, be it in a field or cooking in a pie always seem to represent family to me. We are always a big happy family when pumpkins are near : )
    5. Hearing the Ice Cream Truck music! Who doesn't automatically go back to growing up when the ice cream truck goes by?!

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  9. I got my numbering wrong earlier, but oh well. I guess I'll just start new numbering. Not important at all, but messed up numbering grates on me.

    1. Whenever my best friend and her whole family go out of town, I'm on "critter duty." I feed their dog, cats, and chickens, collect the mail, and, in general, keep an eye on their house. I love, love, love feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs. I feel happy the whole time I'm doing it because it feels so much like when I was a little girl on visits to Arkansas and feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs at Gram's house and Grandmama's house. (See, Gram and Great-Granddaddy's house, Grandmama and Granddaddy's House, and Aunt Sue and Uncle Junior's house were in a big triangle in the middle of acres and acres of cow pasture. There were paths to hike from house to house. The barn and fishing pond and woods were out back of Gram's.) When I was little, I felt so grown up and useful gathering the eggs and feeding the chickens at the 2 houses. Except for I didn't like it when the hens squawked and pecked at me when I reached for eggs! lol

    Anyway, nowadays, tending to my best friend's backyard chickens makes me happy through and through.

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  10. 1: the smell of floor polish reminds me of school both senior and junior. not always good memories either .

    2: the smell of cut grass reminds me of playing in the football field at the top of the road .

    3: the smell of antiseptic always reminds me of visiting hospitals both in recent times and times gone by

    4: the smell of the sea reminds me of going crabbing in rock pools near where i live . it also reminds me of spending the summer 2006 ,in days when i had no work , at a local harbour . i got to know some of the people there . i remember i once earned 5 Euro for gutting mackerel for tourists who were too squeamish to do it themselves . thankfully i am never freaked out by the site of gore . i think i might have lost the skill of mackerel gutting now . though they are delicious fish .

    5:cooking almonds remind me of being on gran canaria , one of the canary islands with my parents . there used to be these stalls everywhere cooking almonds. not sure if you would call it roasting or frying as they were in a big wok type of thing .


    by the way i was taken back to my childhood by site and taste this afternoon . i was going to the local post office and i won 41 euro on the lotto ( the Irish national lottery) i treated myself to 3 scoops of ice cream form an new ice cream shop that had opened near the post office , mauds . to my surprise and joy they had a topping for the ice cream called hundreds and thousands . i haven't seen them since i was knee high to a grasshopper .

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    1. You mentioned the floor cleaner scent and my mind immediately went back to elementary school and seeing Mr. Rufo, the janitor, mop the floor in the kitchen of the cafeteria. The double doors were propped open letting the sun and fresh air come in. Wow, this one is powerful. His name came to me in about a minute, too.

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    2. Floor cleaner! Yes! There's a certain cleaner that's sometimes used in schools and stuff, not as often now as used to be. I think the word blue might be in its name. It's a very distinctive smell, and it is SO embossed in my brain! Whenever I walk into a school, daycare, doctor's office, whathaveyou that's been recently cleaned with that fluid, I breathe the scent in deep, and suddenly it is 1975. I'm 2 years old and go to Miss Tilly's class at daycare. And, I can see clear as day in my mind's eye looking up from my 2 year old's height at the big Winnie the Pooh mural painted on the wall on the walk from the lobby to Miss Tilly's room. And, I remember standing at a table putting together cardboard backed simple puzzles in Miss Tilly's room.

      That smell is one of my earliest permanent memories, all from Pensacola which means ages 3 and younger.

      Here. This picture was taken there.
      http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q68/pepsibookcat/daycare.jpg

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  11. Oh, wow, how I love these lists! It's interesting how other people's evocative memories can be so vivid to a reader. (I guess that's why people love Proust so much) Kelly from NJ, plasticine is, what do you call it, like Play Doh only not so "sweet". The hard stuff... Do they still make that??? Rigel, so glad the memories helped! And, Jo, I forgot about snow and its smells and sounds! Yes, night time skating when I am 11!

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    1. Thanks for the explaination! <3 Is Plasticine home made? we have play doh I know, but I also remember my mom and gram making some home made version with like flour and food coloring and stuff I think. I don't remember what we called the home made stuff......hmmmmm.

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    2. Yes they do! Well we have the same stuff with a different name though. I recently found some in a store where I went to get art supplies.

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    3. We did the homemade stuff too! But plasticine is something different. Man, I can smell it like it's right here!! Like Shalaka says, probably a different name, but definitely a craft store product - and for us older folks, what we got in school instead of Play-doh.

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    4. Oh wow!!! Homemade too.... THATS SOOOO AWESOME!

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    5. So I Googled Plasticine. I have never seen it before, so either I am just too young or it's more of a regional thing that just never made it to us : ) It reminds me of something Gumby would be made out of : )

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  12. 1.The smell of my grandparents making thanks giving dinner

    2.the smell of the sunmer when,my grandfather would cut the grass.

    3.pepermint,and cinnamon (it reninds me of christmas)


    4. I love to smell,pumpkin. I love pumpkin coffee or pumpkin iced coffEe.
    Thats all,i have for nw



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  13. 1. gardenias remind me of my parents bushes at their home

    2. Gasoline smell at or near an airport-travel abounds

    3. See Candy stores no explanation needed

    4. Ferilizer on lawns reminds me of driving to San Diego before the freeways and smelling cows and throwing up in the car.

    5. Ocean smells reminds me of swimming in the ocean as a teenager.

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  14. 2. (or 6. or 5.) The song Baba O'Riley by The Who: It's late '94 or the first half of '95. I'm either 21 or 22. I'm in Charlotte, NC. It's around 10pm on Saturday night. I'm standing by my car, my darling little blue Honda Civic (best car EVER - I drove her for a decade), in a parking lot on Central Ave. It's very dark (well, as dark as it can be in the city) and a bit hazy. To my left is the building I've come to. It's 2 stories, brick, old, a bit worn down but not a dump. Nicely shabby with character. The downstairs is a somewhat punk shoes/clothing/whathaveyou store called Superior Feet. The upstairs, up a steep, narrow, break-your-neck, black wooden staircase is a rather bohemian little theatre called The Perch filled with old sofas and quasi-decent amateur paintings and crazy lighting. There was no stage curtain. The end was signified, instead, by a ratty old brightly colored stuffed animal parrot being lowered on a rope center stage. Looking to my right is a stunning view of nearby Uptown. Have you ever seen Uptown Charlotte at night? It's so pretty. The skyscrapers all lit up, each building's distinctive shape easily identified. It's the prettiest city center I've ever seen.

    Every Friday and Saturday night, there were 2 shows at The Perch. I always went to the late show and then hung out with everyone afterwards. That weekend was a rare weekend when I went to the late Friday night show and then returned again for the same show late Saturday night. The shows? A sketch comedy troupe called The Legally Dead Parrots. Yes, they named themselves after the Monty Python sketch. Several members of the troupe were friends. The best nights were the late performance, hanging out in the theatre cutting up for a while, and then a convoy to an all night diner called The Landmark.

    I'd look right and feel the happy thrill of seeing Uptown all lit up. Finally, FINALLY, I was on my own. Adult. Independent. FREE. Living in a real city, a big place with a metro area population in the 7 digits. A CITY and all the resources and experiences that meant. I had a life! It didn't matter that I had barely any money because I didn't have much in the way of responsibilities. No one was depending on me except me. I was young and single and in the city. Freedom like I'd never known before and have never known since. It was a good, good year. One of the, if not the, best experience(s) of my life. I wasn't going into Uptown that night (although, I often did day or night), but I loved looking at the view. Thinking, "I live here. I live here! In a place that has freakin foreign consulates! I love my apartment. I love my friends. I love my church. I love living here!" lol

    Then, I looked left and upward, into the warm, golden glow of the window that revealed a small portion of the side of the stage in The Perch. The first show of the night was coming to the end, and the grand finale was happening. I knew that upstairs, in that warm room full of warm people in that warm light, the band was playing Baba O'Riley, but the lyrics had been changed to mock the recently passed youth curfew. For example, instead of "Teenage wasteland!" the line was "Teenage chaingang!" And, as I saw Georgia singing and miming driving as she passed through the rectangle of the window, I knew that the actors who were the police were about to mime putting handcuffs on the actors who were the teenagers out after curfew. And, they were all singing, with the audience eventually joining in on the chorus, to the band belting out Baba O'Riley.

    And, I stood there in that parking lot that night feeling as thoroughly satisfied as I am capable of. Everything was so very right in that instant.

    Baba O'Riley, besides being a quite excellent, rocking song, takes me back there every time.

    I never should've left Charlotte. I should've made my life there.

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  15. Ahh Deb your 4th one!! My paternal grandmother passed away when I was 4 or 5 and all that I really remember of her is how warm and soft she was to hug and how she smelt of lilac and lavender. Their house had saskatoons instead of rasberries though.

    Ok so besides that
    1)The crisp cold smell in the air just before the first snowfall. Reminds me of cross-country sking with my Grandemere. They lived beside the river and there was a big section of land only accessible when the river froze over which was where we skied. It seemed absolutley magical to me as a kid, farmland as far as the eye could see and then suddenly you're in a quiet wooded area with nothing but the sound of ski's swishing and the occasional bird twittering, so peaceful.

    2)The song Vai Vedrai from Cirque Du Soleils Alegria. It takes me back to the day my little one was born. I played music when I was in labour and this was the last song I heard before someone turned it off.

    3)The smell of pumpkin makes me want to bake and not neccessarily anything with pumpkin, just something.

    4)Metal and ink make me think of when I played on the typewriter as a child before I could even spell. I would get all dressed up in a fancy dress, heels, gloves and a hat. I can just about feel the round little buttons under my fingers and imagine my mother rolling her eyes at the mess of ribbons, paper and correction tape strips scattered around.

    5)The feeling and smell of plastic figurines reminds me of rainy days spent at the kitchen table with my brother making elaborate scenes with everything from lego fortresses, little green army men and figurines of ewoks, jungle animals, muppetts and countless other things mixed in. I haven't though about those toys in ages! We used to bring a tin of them with us everywhere. At Christmas we would use the cresh and tree as a giant playland. I remember one year we were playing in the tree and my brother knocked one out of my hand and it went flying straight into the lit fireplace my Dad was adding wood to. I think it was smurfette...

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  16. There are more, but I'm gonna stop here. It's a lonely day. Kiddo's at school. Best friend out of town. Weekly Thursday lunch gathering cancelled. The only phone call has been a robot call from the power company updating on area outages. Not even any nonspam emails - my inbox echoes hollow. Money's supertight for the rest of the month because of car repairs. And, with gas prices having shot so high, I can't really afford to go anywhere to seek out contact, color, light, movement. It's a lonely day. I'm feeling all discombobulated and isolated. Trapped.

    Even happy memories bring ghosts and regrets. Losses and wishes. I need to stop on this post.

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  17. Beautiful, evocative memories! Man, Rigel, you could write your own Memories of Things Past"!!

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  18. 1. A specific Caress body wash (tahitian something?) reminds me of the cruise I took with my daughter in 2008. That was the sample-size body wash I brought with me. Reminds me of cruising.

    2. Coconut suntan lotion. Every vacation. :)

    3. Wood smoke from a chimney. In the fall (can't wait!), the neighbors would always use their fireplace. That scent tells me fall is really here.

    4. Song from the ice cream truck, which we do still have, though they are rare. No explanation necessary. Okay, summers as a kid. :)

    5. The smell of gasoline. Going on a trip, ANYWHERE. It was better when I was a kid and we were headed for NH, but it's still a "going somewhere!" smell.

    Barb,
    I didn't honestly know what to say re: yesterday's blog. I had no answers for you. I will wish you luck dealing with the empty nest.

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  19. As I talk about and read about these specific scents, they're coming back to me in my memory and I remember the smells. I can't SMELL them literally, but I can conjure up them. This has always happened for me. Anyone else?

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  20. 1. Smell of the soup my grandmother used to make. I remember coming home from school and being able to smell it while I was still outside. It could make a terrible day so much better.
    2. Roses- remind me of my grandmother. She was the best gardener ever. And she loved roses.
    3. Smell of books, which is hard to describe. Books are such an important part of my life and I have many memories relating to them.
    4. Sounds of a car. So many memories involving cars, not all good either.
    5. Smell of a clean house. Reminds me of my childhood.

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  21. Dawn, i absolutely agree!! Just the descriptions of many of these also evoke my own memories -- really really strongly. It's amazing how that works! Also, thanks for your thoughts today :)

    So many here are powerful for me: coconut suntan lotion, old books (even the musty ones are okay by me). As I said, earlier, snow snow snow!

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  22. Ah..I love the Five Things post...btw I'm back from my vacation, and it was awesome. :)

    1. hay: reminds me of the farm I played, when I was a kid, of the riding lessons, and of course of my bunnies :)

    2. wind - salty air - waves - sand - sea gulls: reminds me of the countless times, I've been to the ocean. My favourite place on earth.

    3. sun lotion: I bought one in Manchester last year, because I needed one for the open air Take That concert...every time I smell it, I think of the great concerts I could experience in England. =)

    4. smell of my shower gel: My grandma used to buy it for me, and I love that smell...reminds me of my grandma, and the nice times I had at her weekend house (with the indoor swimming pool - oh I miss that)

    5. Apples: reminds me of the kindergarten, when my teacher wanted to force me to eat an apple...she said: When you're hungry, you can eat everything.

    I bet there are tons of other things that have memories attached, too (and better examples), but I do forget everything. :(

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  23. It's okay if you can't immediately think of all the "best" or "most evocative" sensory experiences: this is kinda like a flash incentive to think of the first five. I always think of "better" answers later! Welcome home, Becki!!! Hope you had a great time!

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  24. I love this post!!!! Great idea. Mine are more like days/dates of importance.

    1. I was thinking earlier today about when I went to my mission trip to Nicaragua. I shot this video of some of my church members throwing these melons out onto the road. We were all in tears laughing.

    2. The date May 6. It was the day Holly graduated from Berea this year and the date in 2008 when I got my acceptance letter.

    3. August 24, 2011. My first day of medical/surgical nursing. My teacher told us all to stand up and take the person's hand sitting next to us. She then told us to raise our hands. "There will be no more of this starting this year."

    4. July 2011. Can't remember the exact day. All I know is that it was before I left for Scotland, but it was the day my mom told me she was going to quit smoking...again! ^___^

    5. July 2. The day my roommate introduced me to a life-changing experience that is a movie trilogy and book series! :D

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    1. HOW COULD I FORGET???

      6. May 3, 2009. The day I stood forward in front of a church of people I barely knew and beside my sister, made a public decision to rededicate my life to Christ!

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  25. Kelly - a special day indeed good for you, also happens to be my birthday! : D

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  26. Kelly -- great idea to sense-memory important dates! Hmmmm, maybe another future 5 crazy things...

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  27. Pitch and tar. My dad used to do road work around the country in summer and when ever he visted home, you could smell pitch and tar. :)

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    1. Another is a sound memory. Yelling and breaking porchline (did I spell it correctly). I don't think those need to be explained more. Well the memories are not fond memories. Just very strong memories :)

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    2. Another is a sound memory. Yelling and breaking porchline (did I spell it correctly). I don't think those need to be explained more. Well the memories are not fond memories. Just very strong memories :)

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  28. 1. The smell of mothballs - my grandparent's old house.

    2. The smell of hairspray and/or Love Spell from Victoria's Secret - show choir competitions.

    3. The theme song for Growing Pains - show choir performances (again).

    4. The smell of blueberry muffins - early mornings at high school before classes started.

    5. The taste of frozen lemonade - trips to Disney World with my grandparents when I was very young.

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  29. Kasku, love your pitch and tar fondness (me, not so much with the smell ;) ). Julia, #2 made me howl! All of these are so so good!

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