With another cold breath of air blowing today my mind is on warmer times.
Like the fun we had at our summetime fish party.
And when we still had our hot tub.
And when the summer flowers were blooming.
And fun on the boat.
fun with sisters… 
Remember how hot it was last summer?
Isn’t it fun to think back and remember?
I love these quotes:
“When you live with another person for 50 years, all of your memories are invested in that person, like a bank account of shared memories. It’s not that you refer to them constantly. In fact, for people who do not live in the past, you almost never say, “Do you remember that night we...?” But you don’t have to. That is the best of all. You know that the other person does remember. Thus, the past is part of the present as long as the other person lives. It is better than any scrapbook, because you are both living scrapbooks.”
“Good days are to be gathered like grapes, to be trodden and bottled into wine and kept for age to sip at ease beside the fire. If the traveler has vintaged well, he need trouble to wander no longer; the ruby moments glow in his glass at will.”
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.
Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. ~Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Do you have a smell that evokes a certain memory? Your mother’s perfume? Cookies at Christmas? What are your happy smells?
And finally my very favorite memory quote:
”We do not remember days, we remember moments”
Lovely post, Peggy! Thanks for sharing your pictures, thoughts, and quotes. I've never seen a "myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town." But that's the first time I've seen myrtle in a positive context. I've been saddled with the first name Myrtle all of my life! But I was always called Louise which is my middle name. ~ Thanks God for small graces! Lilacs and my hubby are my favorite fragrances!
ReplyDeleteThis is a beautiful thoughtful post. It would be a terrible loss to lose your sense of smell. The smell of gardenias always takes me back to childhood as that was the corsage my father most often gave me back when women and girls wore corsages so many times during the year. And the smell of fruitcake baking is a favorite, taking me back to Mama, although a piece of her cold coconut cake that she only made for Christmas tasted better. Summer and hot weather and school out meant Daddy's burgers being grilled out or the shrimp dinner at Murrell's Inlet when we vacationed at Myrtle Beach. Better stop, although I could go on and on.
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