October 11, 2004
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We went to the Bob Evans Farms festival yesterday. What a beautiful day. It was classic Ohio fall weather; clear blue sky, moderate temperature, dry, and that certain smell in the air. On the way there we passed a farm where a young fellow was out in the yard sitting on a well used go-kart. He was scooting his rump and pushing on one tire with his foot in an obvious attempt to make the darn thing go. I told my wife that this image coupled with the look and smell of fall brought on a flood of boyhood memories; riding my cousin’s homemade go-kart around the farm for hours on end, working on the thing for even longer hours only to ride some more; hiking up the back hill to where the old orchard would offer a few apples that had been spared by the birds and the deer; laying in the drying grass and leaves and staring up at the wispy clouds; and finally running down the hill at the sound of the dinner bell to be the first to wash up and dive into food that had been spread across the kitchen table.
I try to not indulge in regrets, particularly when it comes to something as fickle as parenting and child-rearing. But! If I had it to do over again, I would try to recall the little things in my childhood that so frequently return to boost my spirits and make me smile and make a point of making sure that my children had the oportunity to create their own sustaining memories. It seems that many of these memories were the result of our childhood effort to overcome boredom; the days were sometimes endless and there was an intense drive to “find something to do”. I think that a shortcoming of our modern dailey life is that kids very seldom are lacking of stimulating (over stimulating) things to do. There is some value – I don’t know what it is- to spending a half hour laying under an apple tree and seeing how many times you can toss an apple straight up into the air until it just barely touches that branch and catch it with one hand; all while swatting the occasional sweat bee.
What fond memories do you finding welling up at a certain sound or smell?
Comments (3)
How many times did that apple come down and bop your nose, is my question?
I am absolutely sure, as I’m sure of little else, that your children have their own sustaining memories quite firmly in mind — and that they may be things that surprise you, or that you wouldn’t have imagined could be so positive.
Here’s my example: My mother braids together onion strings (very beautiful, very buccolic). She hangs them in my Dad’s shop beyond the indoor clothes-line (my parents not believing in mechanized clothes dryers, of course). Somewhere around November, one or two of the onions start to rot, and often that smell lingers for months. This is what a whiff of that smell reminds me of: high-stepping up and down my Dad’s shop, doing proper about-faces at each end of the clothesline, with my trombone held up in front of me and the cold November rain pouring down the windows, as I practiced for next Friday’s high school football halftime show. It’s incredibly nostalgic for me. And all from that sickly-sweet scent of rotting onions!
It was a wonderful weekend, wasn’t it?
I really like your point about how over-scheduling children’s lives can actually be a hindrance in the making of lifetime memories. And I also definitely agree with LM4′s point that you may be surprised at the memories a child stores in his/her mind for later. I find that often it’s small things that come to my mind’s eye when triggered by certain sounds, sights or smells.
For example, yesterday I caught a whiff of something that made me think of a fresh, newly opened sticker book with brightly colored new stickers ready to put in it. The memory and the scent were very pleasant, as I was immediately reminded of the simple thrill those things brought me as a young girl, and I spent a moment thinking back on it. That’s nothing my parents could have created or predicted.
i was reading this at work and commenting when i was rudely interrupted by, of all things, work. i know, the nerve.
i doubt i can remember what i said but, it’s a no-brainer for me. i’ve forever associated smells and sounds with places and times. i’ve even written about it.
there’s the scent of a carnival midway, that mix of sweat and summer heat and cotton candy…that takes me back to the quarter rides and the yet to be grasped theory of newton’s law.
going to watch the boys my daughter was friends with in grade school play baseball. hearing the crack of the bat, the murmurs of the crowd, smelling the sweet artificial grape of a sno-cone…took me back to my own youth and summers at my grandparents in tennessee. there was a little league field right across the street and i’d be over there every night. a stranger in the crowd, just absorbing all going on around me.
play-doh = sunday school
freshly waxed linoleum floors baking in the sun shining thru the windows = grade school
i could go on and on. and have been known to.
i tried to not over-schedule sarah when she was young. she had sports after she was in school. same went for girl scouts.
before all that, we’d sit outside in the yard, we’d go for walks to the park, we’d explore and listen and touch and smell… i didn’t believe in organized play groups. still don’t. i prefer(red) kids showing up at the door and, in their “we must go now” voices, ask, “can sarah come out and play?”