When I was a little girl, my family lived next door to an Italian man and his British wife. They had kids, but I don't remember much about them. Just Peter, and Mary, two dogs and the back yard. As I remember it she had a small but lovely rose garden on the side that met with our property, next to his tomatoes. And on Saturday day mornings you could hear Peter out there, working the soil and singing opera like Pavarotti himself. It was idyllic. They were warm and welcoming people and though their cameo appearances in my life were relatively brief, they somehow mean an awful lot to me. Peter died of a heart attack when I was very young. I have no memory of the funeral, small impressions of his family after that point. But every time I smell a garden fresh tomato, I'm way back in that house with the blue kitchen and the pink bedroom with Figaro's chorus wafting in through the open window. The memory stays fresh, and consistent. And warms me like a cup of hot soup.
Isn't it strange how your mind squirrels things away like that? Picking seemingly at random and programing directly into the skeletal structure of your perspective. I have more. Brilliant fuchsia peonies are directly related to my mother, who planted them and graced our kitchen tables with them in wildly delicate bunches because her of grandmother. A walk home from elementary school with my brother that replays its vignette each time I crunch a leaf or breath in crisp autumn air. Piano music makes me close my eyes and drift in and out of consciousness on an overstuffed green couch while another brother fill our home with music and the smell of pot roast and rolls save my from being rocked to entirely sleep by the gently melodies. Tom Petty songs that transport me to the first time I danced barefoot in the living room with my husband. These moments, these things and effects, they've fused with the essence of me. And what's more, with the fibers that tie me to the ones I love. Sometimes I think they may be the sensory core of why I love what and who I do, colors that bring life to relationships that might truly otherwise be flat formalities.
And new ones too. Every morning and evening the bells of Sacred Heart Church call children to school and worshipers to mass. I have rocked, nursed and loved two babies by this accompaniment. And now, those ringing tones are tied forever to soft morning light, green leaves, pink blossoms, and sweet innocents. Curly Sue, standing squarely at the edge of the ocean, salty breezes blowing hair into a halo around her face while she looked on to infinity without batting an eyelash. This is what my minds eye sees when I smell brine on the wind. Deep, deep impressions pressed flawlessly in the soft clay of my memory. And soon, if not already, my girls will be making them too. Encoding moments and perceptions directly into their sophisticated little hard-drives. And building their sense of the world from and around that foundation. I wonder what those flashes will be?