One day while driving home from work, I inhaled a brief scent of an old diesel engine while passing some farms. Immediately, I was a child, playing in the bitterly cold well water of the irrigation trench next to the old tractor that was used to pump the water. I could see my aunt with her red curly hair (she is 5 years older than me, and we were basically kids together), my cousin in just his tighty-whities, which is about all he ever wore until he started school, his older sister and my younger sister. I can see the aluminum pipes lying over a small hill from the trench to the corn middles I can see a watermelon or two floating in the cold water that my grandpa put there for a cold treat later. I feel the heat of the sun on my hair and the muddy sand between my toes. I smell the diesel exhaust from the tractor, the sulfur from the well water, and the green of the corn blowing in the hot breeze. This scene lasts for just a moment, and I’m back to reality.
It always surprises me when I am jolted into a memory by one of my senses being taunted by a random thing that happens throughout my day. Something as innocent as the taste of Kool-Aid taking me back to vacation Bible school or the smell of gun powder bringing back painful memories of basic training. Memory is a powerful thing that plays with our emotions in unexpected ways. There are things in my life that I have forgotten about and have only been restored to memory because of a taste, smell, sound, touch or sight.
The older I get, the more often this seems to happen. Maybe it is because I have more memories to pull from, maybe it is because the things and people from past that are long gone have more meaning to me because I miss them and long for them. Some of these memories have been good, others bad. It seems like most memories I get are either about my grandparents, my childhood, or something significant in my life; however, sometimes it is something as insignificant as fall foliage and cool crisp air bringing back a stroll in Boston Common.
The smell of the fresh turned soil, the wisteria blooms, along with the sight of the new hosta foliage emerging from the ground and the iris standing tall ready to burst open with colorful blooms bring visions of my grandpa’s smiling face. He loved watching spring emerge and taking account of everything in his yard that came back and new surprises that appeared. That is how I feel every spring. I always feel his presence when I am in my garden and there is something new popping its little head through the dirt. When I was a child, he and my dad were always out in the fields breaking ground and planting new crops and starting a new garden season. To this day, I am always anxious to start putting plants in the ground. The smell of the freshly turned earth is always one of my first reminders that winter is leaving, and things are looking up. I love driving home and smelling air the first day the farmers are back in the fields. It sounds strange to say that dirt smells clean, but it is a freshness somehow. Countryfolk understand.
There are so many things that just randomly hit me out of the blue that remind me of people, places, and memories. There is a fabric softener, I don’t know what it is, but I know when I smell it, that smells like my surrogate grandmother, Deedie. The smell of turkey and dressing on Thanksgiving brings back amazing memories, but mostly it brings back my Grandma Wells. She always had me “test” the turkey and dressing when I got there to make sure it was ok. She also made me my own small pan of dressing to take home with me because I liked it so much. The smell of fresh cut wood takes me back to the back of Grandpa’s farm to help Dad cut wood for the heating stove. Music brings childhood memories of my mom. Barbara Streisand, Kenny Rogers, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Goldsboro, Mac Davis, are all voices that take me back to our little cracker box of a house with the large stereo in the living room where Mom always had records playing. I know my right from my left because I remember getting my booster shot in my right arm and I remember it hurting and it was on the side of the barbecue grill when I walked by it, when I was five. I don’t even think about the fact that I am left-handed or that any other normal thing that would make me remember which side was which. I just remember my right arm hurting because of that shot. Maybe I bumped into that grill when I walked by and made it hurt more. I don’t know, but that is how I remember it. When I have to think about which way is right, that is the memory I pull. That may be one reason I hate needles and shots to this day.
Our senses can cause many emotional responses, and some confuse us or cause us to be uncomfortable. When I came home from the Army, I started going to a different church than my parents. It was the same type of church, just a different congregation. I liked going there. Over the years, every time I would go back to visit at my parents’ church, I would feel very uncomfortable and almost scared, but I didn’t really understand why, I just knew I didn’t like the feeling. I grew up in that church and many members there are relatives or dear friends of mine. I was confused for a long time why I felt the way I did, but it happened as soon as I walked into the building. Finally, one day I realized that it was the smell. The smell brought back my time as a child when I was forced to wear a dress to church, which I hated, and when the fear of God was put into me so much that I knew I could never be good enough to get to heaven. I would dream about the end of the world, and the earth always fell out from under me before I would wake up. To my young brain, that meant that I went to hell and thankfully I awoke before I saw it. I heard many sermons in that church that sounded like if you weren’t sinless when you died that there was no hope of a heavenly eternity. I just knew I was bad and no matter how much I tried I could never be that good. The preachers would sometimes yell and raise their voice, and I hated that. I liked a kind preacher who wasn’t scary. Walking into that building and having that smell hit me in the face brought those feelings back. I will say, I really don’t think anyone ever set out to scare me to death at that church, but that is the message I took away from everything I heard. No one else seemed scared. I just expected they weren’t as bad as me.
Unfortunately, our senses don’t always bring back the fondest of memories. Sometimes they stir up things that we long wanted to forget. There are a couple of artists who I really like, but each have an album I can’t hardly listen to because I listened to them constantly while dating men who turned out to be very bad for me. Hearing songs from those albums take me back to those times and to very dark places. So does getting a whiff of the cologne these men used to wear.
When I was living in the barracks at OIT (occupational individual training) in the military, there were several songs that were played on my floor very loudly and almost nonstop. This was a time in my life when I wanted to be anywhere else on earth than where I was. Those songs irritated me to no end. When I hear one of them today, I remove myself just because of the bad places my mind goes.
To most people a beautiful clear blue sky with a cool fresh breeze is a blessing. I totally agree, except that 9/11/2001 was one of those perfect days, and now they take me back to there. I didn’t just watch it on television, I was with people who were personally affected by it, not knowing if their loved ones were alive or dead. I was across the street from a possible target and was put on lockdown without communication to the outside world. I was within 30 miles of six airports. Seeing fighter jets flying over when no other planes were allowed in the skies was a very eerie and surreal feeling. I saw grown men cry that day, men who were my superiors and who I looked up to. So clear blue skies sometimes put me on guard and alert for something bad to happen.
When I was in the hospital several years ago, I had a terrible time of things. Now, I realize no one has a good time in the hospital, and my stay was probably no worse than anyone else’s, but knowing how things tend to trigger me, I did notice things while I was in the hospital that I have literally prayed I will never encounter again, so as not to be reminded of the torture I felt I was enduring. One was the smell. There was a smell what was similar to raw pumpkin, but nauseating, that was ever present. I could not smell anything but that. I believe it had something to do with the NG tube that was my nemesis throughout my stay. The second thing was the Mother’s Day card commercial from Hallmark. It played at every commercial break. After lying in a bed for ten days with nothing to do but watch television I wanted to punch whoever made the Mother’s Day commercial. I would rather see the My Pillow guy, and that is saying something. The third thing was the sound of my pain med machine beeping. It would beep for hours and hours and no one cared that I was not getting pain relief or that I was slowing going insane. It was so bad that I could hear it when it wasn’t even beeping. I guess I was dreaming it, long after I left the hospital. The last thing was the smell of myself. Have you ever been unable to get away from the smell of yourself? I was in the hospital for ten days. On the ninth day, they removed the NG tube and the bandage on my torso, and I was allowed to take a shower and put on clean pajamas while they changed my bed. I am a very clean person, one who showers or baths sometimes multiple times a day, and going nine days in the same hospital gown was making me disgusted with myself. I always thought hospitals were supposed to be clean places and supposed to care for the patients and keep them clean, but that was not my experience. Unfortunately, that hospital stay would cause greater problems when covid came around and I realized I had PTSD from being tortured by a nurse with an NG tube. A covid test triggered the PTSD and I ended up going through twelve weeks of therapy to get past those memories.
Until just a few years ago, I never heard the word ‘triggered’ when talking about memories or past experiences, but it has become common language in today’s society. I would be one of the first to roll my eyes at its use if I didn’t have several triggers myself. But really, all of these things in our lives that cause our senses to spark a memory, or an emotional response are triggers. Triggers don’t have to be bad things; we just tend to use the word with a negative context.
For all the bad places our senses can take us, they can take us to many more beautiful, pleasant places. In the early fall, sometimes, right before school starts and during football season, I can faintly hear the high school band playing on the football field a couple blocks away. The sound of the drums takes me back to my high school and college days when band was my life. Sometimes I just find myself standing on my deck daydreaming of those amazing times with my band friends, the times on the field practicing for the big game, the big game when we played in the bleachers getting the crowd fired up, and marched on that great freshly painted field with the Indian head on the 50 yard line, the evenings when we would eat together or got to Ricky’s dorm room to watch television, or to a practice room for hours, or all pile in vehicles and go to Bono bridge. Those were the days. Today, the Indians no longer exist, neither does Bono bridge, but the memories all of us hold could fill many volumes.
The next time your senses bring back a precious memory, close your eyes, take a deep breath and enjoy. Maybe it is God’s way of giving us a glimpse of a special time with special people and reminding us that we have had enjoyable times. If it is a dark memory, close your eyes and take a deep breath and thank God that He got you through that distressing part of your life and for reminding you that He is there for you, delivering you from those dark days. Thank Him for those who have left our world who have meant so much to us and visit us only in our memories and dreams. Thank him for the times that were special and wonderful and for those hard times that made us stronger or taught us hard lessons. Thank Him for our senses that trigger the memories that take us back to those times.
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