My Five Senses and Random Memories

It's amazing how certain sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. can take us back to a place in time we may have completely forgotten about.

I've always been an extremely nastalgic person. My memories of loved ones and times past are something I hold close to my heart. Sometimes really obscure occurrences trigger old memories and can make me rather emotional (especially lately--but it's not my fault!).

A couple weeks ago, when I was in Palm Springs with Brian's family, we went on a walk through our hotel's golf course Sunday evening after we'd eaten dinner. It was a beautiful night. The course was definitely a higher-end golf course, extremely green (even though we were in the middle of the desert), with beautiful flowers blooming all over the place. We were about half way across the course when a light breeze rolled through and I smelled something that made me stop in my tracks. It was a fragrant, sweet smell and one that I knew instantly I had smelled before. It took me a second to figure out how I knew the smell. There were delicate white flowers growing up the side of one of the fences (I later found out it was a jasmine flower) and I stepped forward to smell them. Sure enough, that's where the smell was coming from. All of a sudden it hit me. I knew exactly where I'd smelled it before. At first I doubted myself because I didn't think there was any way my memory was that good, but years ago, when my Dad's mom lived in the Bay Area California, her backyard was full of all sorts of plants and vines. Jasmine was one of them. She moved from California when I was 10 and passed away almost 4 years ago (has it really been that long!?!). I sure did love that lady. I missed her all the more (and this is where my emotions really kicked in) when I realized that it was Mother's Day that day. I had to fight hard to hold back tears so Brian's family wouldn't think I was a total moron. As soon as I got home from the trip, I went out and bought jasmine-scented lotion (amazingly easy to find), just so I could hold onto the scent. Some day when I have a house that the sun actually reaches (the trees in our yard are so tall that we get virtually no sun), I am going to plant jasmine and tell my kids stories about my Grandma.

A few months ago I was eating some chicken stir-fry and all of a sudden a certain spice or seasoning triggered another random memory in my brain. It took me a minute to realize what I was tasting, but I slowly started remembering the summer of the year I was 11. My parents must have had their last straw with a house full of pre-teens (and one 6-year-old who already thought she was a teenager) and sent us to stay with our grandparents in Oregon for the summer. I remember eating two very specific things that summer. The first one being one of those no-bake Jello-0 cheesecakes. One of my cousins (Joy or Julie) ran through their farm house to deliver it to us and it slipped out of their hands and fell upside down onto the floor. For some reason the loss of that cheesecake really devestated me -- we even ran to get spoons so we could eat the salvagable part off the floor. I laugh about it now, but back then, I don't ever remember my mom buying things like that, so we must have thought it was a special treat (man, were we deprived or what?). It goes to show that some things never change with me and food. It's one of the only things I still get really passionate about. The second food item I remember from that summer is my Grandma Thatcher making us chicken stir-fry with Yoshida's sauce. How in the world I remembered something like Yoshida's, I will never know. All I know is that for the past few weeks I have begged my mom to buy some in Utah and bring it back to Virginia for me (I can't find anywhere here that sells it!). Tonight I tried it and sure enough it was the exact taste I remembered. For a brief moment I closed my eyes and I found myself sitting at my Grandma's kitchen table eating the same chicken. She died when I was 12. I didn't get another summer with her, so unfortunately, I'll have to take whatever memory of her I can get, even if it is of Yoshida's sauce.

I sure do miss my grandmas.

On a ligher note, to this day, the sound of a distant train whistle still reminds both Andrea and I of an incredibly creepy Stephen King movie we made the mistake of watching when we were younger. We talked about it this past weekend when we were driving across a train track in D.C. We had to have been no older than 12. Mom, why in the world did you let us watch this movie? Didn't you know it would be permanently scarring? Adults shouldn't even be allowed to watch something like that. It was evil, I swear. All you need to know is that there was a train involved. I think it was one of those movies that was ultimately so disturbing that it sucked us in and we didn't even realize we had the choice to walk away from it. I met Stephen King the summer I interned for C-SPAN's Book TV (Yes, I interned for Book TV. Yes, I am a nerd.) and I wanted to go up to him and ask if he knew what he was doing to little children!

I don't know why I chose to post about this, but I could go on and on . . . Do these types of things happen to anyone else? Do certain sounds, tastes, and smells do these things to you? I mean, I know I've got quirks, but I can't be the only one!