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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Taste and Smell

Lately I have been feeling very nostalgic. Things keep popping up that remind me of days gone by. Especially tastes and smells. Earlier this summer I ate my first watermelon of the year. Just one bite and I was back on my Papa Nash's farm in Arkansas. It was somewhat of a shock to me. I have great memories of the farm and think of it often, but I had no idea that one bite of watermelon would make me wish I could go there. Running to the pigpen to see the pigs, playing in the hayloft and getting in trouble for scattering hay everywhere, walking on the rocks around the flowerbeds...ahh good times.

Another memory came in the form of a smell. I got a free bottle of Avon bodywash at a picnic. The first time I used it I smelled my Mamaw Owen's bathroom. I loved that bathroom. It had a pedestal sink and a claw foot tub. There was a chest of drawers that had no telling how many coats of paint on it in the corner. The bathroom door closed automatically so there was a little wooden stool that she used to prop the door open. The light had to be turned on by pulling a string hanging from the bulb in the center of the room. And there was Avon. The top of the dresser was covered with bottles and tubes of powders, lotions, and shampoos, and the top drawer held even more goodies. For a little girl it was like heaven!

I also had a memory of my parents' home when I made black-eyed peas and cornbread for dinner the other night. That memory doesn't have a specific place since my family moved around so much, but just a feeling of being in my parents' house eating vegetables for dinner. My black-eyed peas weren't as good as my mom's because we can't get ham to season them with here, but they still could bring back the memory of good home cooking.

It made me kind of sad to think about these memories. My grandparent's sold their farm and moved into town when I was in high school so it has been 20 years since I've seen it, and Papa Nash died in 2002. My Mamaw Owen sold the house with the bathroom right after we moved to Turkey so I won't have a chance to relax in that old fashioned tub anymore. I love these memories and am sad that my kids won't know these places personally. I wonder what memories they will have when they are older. I wonder what will trigger memories of the way they grew up or of special times. It will be interesting to see since they are growing up in a foreign country.

2 comments:

Gina said...

I had many of your same memories of my grandparents house, and when my grandfather died and we had to sell the house last year, it was really hard to walk through it one last time and remember all the things I got to do there during the over 40yrs they lived there. Funny, I think their bathroom also held most of my memories!! We each need to write them down to give to our kids someday. Isn't it amazing how God gives us those 'senses'??

becky marshall said...

My Mama Jo had a bathroom full of Avon, too! We would make concoctions in the sink by pouring in a dab of this and a dab of that...eeewwww... we must have wasted thousands of dollars of Avon.