Seeing (and feeling, smelling) things

I've been bombarded these past few days with sense memories of my mother. She feels close by, and there is strong nostalgia and sadness that makes tears well up but not spill over.

Sense memory is not fully understood by science -- in the nose, for instance, the neurons die in 60 days and new ones are generated -- so how do you explain the flood of little girl memories when in the middle of the grocery store I catch a whiff of Tabu, which for years was my mother's perfume? And remember Canoe, *the* men's fragrance of the '60s? It immediately triggers memories of darkened gymnasiums decked with crepe paper, with an underlying hint of sweaty clothes , and dancing cheek to cheek with my boyfriend, one tall order of raging hormones rarin' to go.

I paged through a new catalog and saw a sweater that Mom would have loved, and I could *see* her in it, sitting in her lift chair, her snowy hair arranged just so, lipstick on and cheeks blushed. (It takes longer to write the description than it did to flash on the image...)

Her engagement ring and my grandmother's wedding ring are on my right hand and I wear them always. But last night, as I was listening to someone talking in a meeting, I felt *her* hand wearing it, touching mine, and when I squinted, I could see that thin veined hand with fingers slightly askew from arthritis. And what 50-ish woman hasn't had the experience of putting her arm through a sleeve and seeing her mother's hand come through it?

I finished a book by Linda Ellerbee, "Take Big Bites," and knew that Mom would have loved it, and probably Daddy too. Mom *read* in recent years through Books on Tape, often falling asleep in the middle of a tape, and then having to rewind to the place where she dozed. Even in her last week of life, she read, through the eyes and voice of her dear caretaker Pat, who told me that she'd skipped some pages so that they could finish the book before Mom slipped away.

I wanted to call her and tell her about the book. So I did...but not through any phone system.

Aromas of coffee and toast and bacon -- real, honest-to-god, full-fat slices of pig and not the turkey stuff -- instantly put me in the bedroom where I grew up, waking to those homey scents and hearing the Corningware coffeemaker perking frantically, my father singing while he turned the bacon.

Sense memories make me aware of time passing -- how much sand has dripped through life's hourglass -- and I marvel at how something so trivial, so common can evoke such strong feelings so many years later. They are uniquely personal...while my brother may share event memories, he has his own sense memories. And we are constantly adding to our sensory library, unconsciously linking a place, a time in life, a person, an event with our emotions, our memories.

Tonight I'll look at the full moon from Daddy's shoulder, the way I did when I was three and he carried me outside one summer night to see it, and he sang to me: "By the light....of the silvery moon...."