Saturday, March 22, 2008

Memory Triggers

Memory is a funny thing. Little sights, sounds and smells trigger responses we think are long buried.

Driving north from my house, I pass under a line of flowering plum trees that make me think of Anne of Green Gables.

The smell of creosote and salt water takes me home faster than any other smell. The sound of home is the constant drumming of rain water falling off a roof onto a piece of plywood. (I'm sure Dad had a good reason for putting that plywood right outside my window. Rain is white noise to me now.)

The hot cross buns rising on my stove top tonight have triggered a string of memories about my best college buddy who insisted on making them every year in the old dorm oven. I wonder how she's doing. I bet she's making hot cross buns now, too.

Songs can be that way. Most of the music that takes me down memory lane are the songs we sang in church, songs that are such a part of me I'll be singing them when the rest of my brain has turned to mush. Songs that are so fixed in my heart that I'll never forget the words. Songs that will usher me out of this life. You have songs like that, too.

What triggers your dormant memories? What makes it all come flooding back?

1 comment:

Linda Judd said...

Raspberries! The smell of raspberries, much more than the taste, remind me of my Great Aunt Agnes. The scent takes me back to Aunt Agnes' backyard, in Oregon, where the hot summer sun seemed to cook the scent of the berries right into the air, making her entire backyard wonderfully aromatic. I think I was five years old when I spent the summer at her house, so that memory has been with me for over five decades. I sure do miss Aunt Agnes!