Smells Lke Hanukkah!

A few nights ago it was Halloween. Gerry and I settled in for the evening to watch the baseball game knowing there would be many distractions. We had a fire in the fireplace and I lit my new pumpkin scented Yankee candle. (Yankee candles are one of the reasons I appreciate the change of seasons.)

Chelsea went crazy every time the doorbell rang; I would hold her 2.7 pounds feisty frame in my arms while Gerry doled out the chocolate. Maya on the other hand, a substantial 7 pounder,  sat where whe was told to and watched the action from her spot at the edge of the carpet.

At one point when Gerry opened the door to a group of young boys one of them must have caught the scent of the pumpkin candle because he exclaimed "Oh! It smells like Hanukkah!"

I'm not Jewish and I have no idea what the smells of Hannukkah might be but I was struck by his remark and reminded of what a powerful took the sense of smell is in evoking memories.

I have a bottle of body lotion tucked away and every so often I pull it out and take a whiff and I am transported immediately to the Dominican Republic where we enjoyed a vacation a few years ago. I slathered that lotion on every day while we were there.

The scent of Jergens hand lotion reminds me of Mom and tiny squirt of lotion she would put on my hand when I was a child and we were getting ready to go out into the cold Saskatchewan winter.

A strong coffee smell makes me think of Mrs. Crooks, a neighbor who lived behind us when I was a child. Mom used to take me with her when she went to visit and Mrs. Crooks always had one of those Pyrex coffee pots sitting on her stove and the scent of perculating coffee filled her kitchen.

As we get older we amass an array of memories that are grounded in smell. What smells evoke strong memory with you?

Ghosts

There have been ghosts all around me today.

I am in a city where I used to live, where I lived for a very long time as a matter of fact, and took some time this afternoon to visit some once-familiar places. I walked, I drove, I remembered, conjured ghosts of days gone by, the kind of thing I have enjoyed doing in the past.

It was different this time.

I was overcome with a powerful sense of grief; the kind of grief that I remember from many years ago, the kind that hurts physically as well as emotionally. And lonliness.

I can't say what prompted these emotions. I am the kind of person who has always cherished solitude, sought it out even, so I was taken aback by the overwhelming emotion that came over me for no apparent reason. I pushed through it as I have done many times in the past.

Later, I worked for a number of hours on my memoir. I went back in time to the 1970's and found ghosts there as well. I learned that in my writing I tend to gloss over periods of deep emotion and the 70's were, most definitely for me, filled with periods of deep emotion.

So now, at the end of the day, having coped with these ghosts all day, I am exhausted. I pray that I sleep deep and dreamless and that the ghosts have moved on by morning.

Losing It

In my memoir, I am writing about a time in my life when I came close to losing it. What in the world does that mean, anyway? Losing it.

For those of us who have lived some or all of our lives as one of the hyper-diligent, the concept of losing control of anything is incomprehensible. As impossible as I knew it would be to do, the thought of letting go of feeling responsible for everything was oh-so-alluring for a season.

Sometimes, these many years past, on a hot, sultry summer night, I remember those nights when my family slept but I wandered the halls, scrubbed the floor, or sat on the patio, and considered what it might feel like to lose my mind.

I wondered how it was done. Did one just decide to let go of all manner of decorum? What would others think?

I was tired of keeping my finger in the dyke; I was so tempted to pull it out and let the flood come.

It was another lifetime. I was another person.

Mother's Hands

I have worn contact lenses since I was a teenager and few years ago I got reading glasses to wear over my contacts for seeing things close up. 

First thing in the morning when my eyes are naked, so to speak, without the benefit of a corrective lens of any kind I see some things clearest of all and sometimes what I see startles me. Like the other morning when I saw my hands and realized that they are no longer the hands of a young woman.

At first I was somewhat dismayed to find that my hands have aged along with the rest of my body. Fine lines crisscross the back at all angles; flesh that was once taut and firm is now softer and lies in soft folds at the base of my fingers; a bluish vein snakes a prominent path from one side to the other.

I recognized the hands as those of my mother. Mom was almost exactly four years older than I am today when she passed away. It has been twenty-five years since I saw her, I barely recall what her voice sounded like, yet I recognized her hands when I saw them that morning.

They were the hands that fed me, bathed me, caressed me, played with me, and even occasionally spanked me. They were the hands that cooked for our family, cleaned our home, painted our walls, mowed our lawn, and planted gladiola bulbs in the spring. They were the hands that made crumb cake, banana bread, peanut butter cookies, and heavy brandy-soaked Christmas cake. They were the hands that sewed dresses and knit mittens and scarves. They were the hands that poured peroxide on my skinned knees and held me when I cried. They were the hands that smelled like Jergens hand lotion.

They were the hands that held my mother’s head in them as she wept when she was told that my father had died. They were the hands that held mine and my sister’s when we walked to the front of the sanctuary to stand before his casket on that surreal day when he was laid to rest.

My hands, the hands of a woman who is no longer young, have their own story.  Tucked within the wrinkles and folds is the story of my life.  What point would there be in longing for the youthful hands I once hand or despairing over the changes that have taken place? 

After all, my hands are also the hands of a mother.

Keypunch Operator

It's graduation season and that got me thinking back thirty-three (!) years to my own high school graduation.

It was May 25, 1976 and it was another lifetime. My first "real" job after graduation was at a mining company working as a keypunch operator. A keypunch operator? Yes, a keypunch operator. They're an extinct breed here in the twenty-first century, but we were a vital part of business back then.

Our work would come in to us in batches. A batch could either be a set of time cards bundled together in an elastic band, or a set of invoices paper clipped together. The time cards were always my favorite thing to do. They would be loaded into the keypunch machine and one by one they would feed into a window directly in front of where I sat. Employees would have written the number of hours they worked each day and I would key those numbers so that they would punch little holes in the appropriate place on the card.

When one of us finished keying a batch, the punched cards would be put back into our in-basket to be verified at a later time. Verifying was simply keying the same thing over again to identify any mis-punched holes which would require that a new card be created.

Keypunching was the kind of work that allowed one to shift their brain into auto-pilot. When one got good enough at keying there was little thought required because the fingers would automatically move to they keys based on the numbers that the eyes saw. There was a lot of deep thought that one could do during keypunching.

My best friend today was a keypunch operator in her past life as well. We both have said that keypunching was one of the best jobs we ever had.

Fast forward to 2009 and the time card employees at the company where I work key their own time into the computer. Keypunch operators have gone the way of the Edsel and the do-do bird.

I can't help but wonder about some of the high tech jobs that young people are taking today. Which ones will go the way of the keypunch operator in the years to come?

Book orders

One of my favorite memories from my school days, was when we woul get to bring home the Scholastic book order forms. I would spend days poring over those order forms trying to make the right choice. It was similar to the way that I pored over the Christmas Wish Book every year, only better, because it involved books!

Once I made my final selection, and Mom approved, she would fill out the order form on the back and I would return it to school with the money to pay for the book. Then the waiting started!

I remember the excitement I felt when the books came in. Those of us who had placed orders would receive the books in plastic bags with the order form we had filled out attached. Oh how happy I was to hold a new book!

I still remember many of the titles of those books fondly. I fact, I still have some of the books. My children enjoyed reading them, and I hope that little Makiya will some day too.

Do you remember any of these books?

The Ghostly Trio by Nancy Woollcott Smith
Old Charlie by Clyde Robert Bulla and Paul Galdone
Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors by Lavinia Derwent, Joe Lasker, and Eva Moore
Barrel of Laughs by by Edna Mitchell Preston
The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Summer Memories

It's over 90 degrees this afternoon and I am loving it! Of course, I probably love it more because I have the luxury of an air conditioned home and an air conditioned vehicle to drive! But right now I am sitting on my lawn swing enjoying the heat and drinking some iced tea. I can hear a lawn mower in the distance and children laughing. I thought I would share some of my own memories of summers past that I remember fondly - in no particular order....

1. When the bookmobile would come to our neighbourhood. I would spent so much time lookinjg at the selection of books that they brought....carefully selecting...then changing my mind until I found just the right choice for my allotted three books.

2. Barbecues in our back yard and the smell of the briquettes when my dad would drop them in a galvanized bucket of water when we were finished roasting the last marshmallow.

3. Our typical summer evening supper - potato salad, cold cuts, jello, cheese, and bread.

4. Getting two new pair of "baby doll" pajamas to replace the winter flannels.

5. Sitting outside with library books while Laurinda and Michael played in the turtle pool.

6. Getting up at three o'clock in the morning to leave on vacation. My Dad liked to drive in the early, coolest part of the day. No air conditioning in the car back then!

7. Shelling peas with my Mom and Aunt....and eating more than went into the bowl.

8. Going to Elgin Park to play in the wading pool and being told not to get my hair wet. I have since realized that I was probably told that as a safety precaution...but at the time it made no sense to me....and it bugged me because my friends were allowed to get their hair wet.

9. Going to the Kentucky Friend Chicken for milkshakes.

10. Watching "Gone With The Wind" with Laurinda downstairs in the coolest place in the house.

11. Going to see "Forest Gump" with Michael.

12. August 11, 2006 - Laurinda and Gord's wedding day.

13. August 6, 2005 - Brandon and Nicole's wedding day.

14. Sleeping in the top bunk of the trailer with my sister where I'm sure that the temperature topped 110 degrees!

15. Hauling endless jugs of water for parents to fill the water cooler.

Summer is such a magical time in so many ways....I wonder if in six months I'll be able to make a similar list about winters past.....hmmmmm....food for thought!

So that's it for now.....I have a good book sitting here just calling my name.

Until later.....