Triggers

I was thinking about associations lately. How certain things, and smells and feelings will always bring me back to certain places.

Dial liquid orange soap makes me think of Alison & John's house. Of Friday night suppers there, summers spent with neices & nephews, and feeling safe and comfortable in that environment. Butterscotch candies make me think of visiting Bubba & Daddy Ray. Of playing Chinese checkers on a metal board and sharing holidays and family events together. Christmas makes me think of Grandma & Grandpa's house, I can smell the warmth and taste the egg-in-the-hole she'd make. I see her small porcelain tree with little colored lights adorning it sitting in the dining room. When I smell that musty cigarette smell mixed with age I think of Matt's Grandparents apartment. The carpets worn from years of use, the walls and rooms filled with treasures collected throughout a well lived life. It doesn't smell bad to me, it smells like family, memories and time.

When I was growing up my friends and I would talk about what smells we experienced in each other's homes. Emily's Mom's car always had that new car smell that made me feel kind of sick. Sarah's house smelled of middle class cooking and synthetics. The Purinton's house smelled of nature, wood and kids. I never knew what my house smelled like, I lived in it too much, and still do, to notice anything unusual. Someone told me it smelled like peanuts.

I want that now, a place that I create as ours and we fill with who we are. What will be associated with us, and how will it permeate others lives? And what associations am I still to find? Will I look back 10 years from now and smell the inside of a new BMW and be transported back to those many Sunday evenings getting driven back in to the city, to our first home? The one where it all started.