charliesmum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
charliesmum) wrote2005-06-23 01:08 pm
charliesmum) wrote2005-06-23 01:08 pm
Memory Meme (Meme-ory?...No)
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bookgrrl
Five random memories from your childhood. One for each sense.
Sound: The sound of the dishwasher running. Every night, after we kids were tucked in bed, the last thing my mom would do is run the dishwasher, and I would fall asleep with it humming in the background. It was comforting, the sound of routine, which is all any child wants, really.
Taste: Campbell's Chicken and Stars soup. Total comfort food, and what I generally ate when I was sick. Just tasting it today brings back that dreamy feeling of sitting on the couch in jammies in the middle of the day, a tv tray in front of me, and some show I'd never get to watch otherwise blaring away.
Smell: Cantaloupe. Every summer we would go to Ocean City NJ where my grandparents lived. One summer, and I can't remember which one, we stopped on the way home to pick up some fruit at one of those farm stands. On the way home, the trunk got so hot that it totally killed the cantaloupe that was in the trunk, and for the rest of the summer our car smelled faintly of cantaloupe. To this day that sweet, fruity smell takes me right back to the summertimes of my childhood.
Touch: Beach again. Stepping onto the beach when the sand was so hot you couldn't stand there for more than a second. We made it a game, seeing who could stand there the longest before lifting up the foot and hopping onto the other one and eventually racing down to the stretch of beach closer to the ocean, the hot sand giving way to cooler, wetter sand the muddy sand that squished between our toes as we went into the ocean. Then there was the jetty - a collection of rocks that made a sort of pier in the ocean, designed to keep the beach from eroding or something. We would climb all over those rocks, warm and rough and slippery by turns, and pretend many things, from being shipwrecked survivors to visitors to an alien planet.
Sight: Leaving my grandparent's house at the shore. My grandfather would stand outside, next to the little ornamental street lamp that was in their yard, and wave us off. I would be in the 'back back' of the station wagon, waving at him as we drove down the street. The last time he did this was the last time I saw him alive; he was ill with cancer and passed away when I was 10 years old. I can still see him standing there, smiling, and waving good-bye.
bookgrrlFive random memories from your childhood. One for each sense.
Sound: The sound of the dishwasher running. Every night, after we kids were tucked in bed, the last thing my mom would do is run the dishwasher, and I would fall asleep with it humming in the background. It was comforting, the sound of routine, which is all any child wants, really.
Taste: Campbell's Chicken and Stars soup. Total comfort food, and what I generally ate when I was sick. Just tasting it today brings back that dreamy feeling of sitting on the couch in jammies in the middle of the day, a tv tray in front of me, and some show I'd never get to watch otherwise blaring away.
Smell: Cantaloupe. Every summer we would go to Ocean City NJ where my grandparents lived. One summer, and I can't remember which one, we stopped on the way home to pick up some fruit at one of those farm stands. On the way home, the trunk got so hot that it totally killed the cantaloupe that was in the trunk, and for the rest of the summer our car smelled faintly of cantaloupe. To this day that sweet, fruity smell takes me right back to the summertimes of my childhood.
Touch: Beach again. Stepping onto the beach when the sand was so hot you couldn't stand there for more than a second. We made it a game, seeing who could stand there the longest before lifting up the foot and hopping onto the other one and eventually racing down to the stretch of beach closer to the ocean, the hot sand giving way to cooler, wetter sand the muddy sand that squished between our toes as we went into the ocean. Then there was the jetty - a collection of rocks that made a sort of pier in the ocean, designed to keep the beach from eroding or something. We would climb all over those rocks, warm and rough and slippery by turns, and pretend many things, from being shipwrecked survivors to visitors to an alien planet.
Sight: Leaving my grandparent's house at the shore. My grandfather would stand outside, next to the little ornamental street lamp that was in their yard, and wave us off. I would be in the 'back back' of the station wagon, waving at him as we drove down the street. The last time he did this was the last time I saw him alive; he was ill with cancer and passed away when I was 10 years old. I can still see him standing there, smiling, and waving good-bye.
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Thinking about these questions sent me on Google quest for the "smell" one. It ended up being rather a fun trip down memory lane -- as thinking of all this has been -- so thanks for that!
Sound: Football games on the radio on Sunday afternoons. I didn't, and still don't, care about football, but the Cornhusker games babbling on a tinny radio in the background I always associate with my childhood.
Taste: Rock candy, something we'd only ever get on vacations. All the little stores on the backroads of Missouri and Kansas seemed to sell it. It's nothing I'd eat now, because is there anything else it besides sugar? And it just wouldn't seem the same without buying it in the Ozarks with a snow globe or keychain or some other cheap souvenir that my sister loved to buy with our saved-up allowances.
Smell: My mother's perfume. For the longest time she wore nothing but Candid from Avon, and the smell is always associated with the babysitter showing up, because my parents were going out! She was an Avon lady herself for a while, and my Google quest was to figure out what that scent was that I liked from all the produts we had cluttering our house. I found it: Moonwind, but it's discontinued. I had the talc, in a pretty, dark blue bottle, and I loved it.
Touch: Playing in melting snow in the springtime, especially creating "rivers" in the gutters, where the snow was dotted with little rocks from sanding the streets. I'd form it into a dam to catch the streams of water and create a lake, and I'd soak my mittens through -- or work barehanded!
Sight: The way I always seem to remember my grandparents' house at twilight, whether playing on the sidewalks out front, or on the patio in back looking out over my grandma's roses and Papa Jake's huge vegetable garden. I picture all of it on the cusp of getting dark, just as the fireflies are coming out.
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I love the story of your mother's perfume. Very sweet.
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Oops, I have to make a correction to what I wrote:
...some other cheap souvenir that my sister loved to buy with our saved-up allowances.
That should be my sister and I -- my inadvertant word-skipping made it sound like my sister was stealing my allowance for her cheap souvenirs. No, no, we both bought them. Don't want to slander her as a thief!
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(Although, I do buy magnets for my 'fridge whenever I go anywhere. Itry to get the silliest, most tourist-y looking one possible. I have people who are going to interesting places bring me back one, because they are inexpensive and easy to carry.
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Sound: of the cool lake water lapping against the hull of my grandfathers boat on a warm summer afternoon.
Taste: of my grandmothers poached eggs on toast...a grown up treat she always made special for me and my grandfather on cool mornings, camping at the lake, with a dash of salt and pepper.
Smell: a combination of the salt in the ocean air, sawdust and old spice...a combination i would catch a hint of often, on the pier where i would fish with my grandfather. for no reason, from time to time, i can smell that comforting combination that was only my grandfathers, and i know he is there, watching over me....
Touch: the slippery, soft, gelatin feeling of salmon eggs...all tucked into their glass gar....my grandfathers bait of choice when fishing the Mount Shasta Lakes for Trout...
Sight: my grandfather..."Mighty Joe Young"... lean, muscled and deeply tanned...bright blue eyes shinning like tiny azure oceans, with a hint of mischief always tucked behind them...standing tall on the dock, making ready to cast off the lines, on our way out to yet another treasured day of fishing the Northern Californian lakes....the way i will always remember him...
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Mine was hugely important to me. Charlie is named for him.