Memories

All kinds of memories are coming back today. I’m sure it’s the cold. It’s colder than usual, it seems. It’s bringing back memories of going to Chewelah for the first time & driving part way home in snow flurries. And memories of going to Walla Walla & having to buy chains to even get out of town, not to mention quite a bit of the way home, because it unexpectedly snowed a couple inches over night.

Brings back the sweet smell of rum & cokes… which were usually mostly rum, after usually mostly dry summers. And freedom.

Fall came early this year. Trees don’t usually start turning in mid-September around here. And I can nearly smell the snow. Of course, this time of year clear through early spring I can usually nearly smell the snow because I want it so bad. Must be residual to spending a decade of my life way up north in Calgary where there actually was snow in winter, and four seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), rather than the three we get here (wet/cold, wet/not-so-cold, too-damn-hot). Any more, snow is no longer the common-place, all-purpose toy it was when I was a child, but a suspension of the normal routine. I am a snow-chicken — I don’t drive in it, and when I have to, it’s with white knuckles. But that doesn’t so much tend to be a this time of year memory, just flurries and the start of Act II of the Nutcracker. I’ve always loved that piece of music — I’m sure snowflakes really do dance to that piece of music.

I can almost smell walking down to the market again, to work in the cold. And walking into the tea/spice shops I’ve worked in over various years. I hear a cacaphony of strains of music fighting to fit their way into the memories.

All of that seems so far away now, and still so close, as I walked M1 to school and watched as she stood in line waiting for the bell, then going off through the doors into her own life building her own memories.