Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Scents of grandparents past

Two times in the last two days I have had memories of my grandparents wash over me while I worked in the yard.  Both times the memories were brought up by smells and both times I had a warm, loved feeling inside.

Yesterday, while I was using a pitchfork to get some hay for the chicken pen, I remembered Grandmother and Granddaddy Atkinson's hay barn.  As I pulled layers of hay from a round bale, the smell of that hay knocked me back in time.  All the way back to the mid-70's when my sisters, my cousins and I would play hide-n-seek in a barn stacked tall with square hay bales.

Today I cut the grass around a fig tree and remembered the one in Mama and Papa Skaggs' back yard.  My memory isn't so much of the figs, but of the back yard.  Always well-manicured, with a small garden and a work shed full of tools.

I wonder what smells will remind our grandchildren of us.  Maybe it will be...

Bubble bath
Chicken scratch feed
Fresh cut grass
Chicken nuggets
Chocolate Oatmeal cookies
Smoke from a fireplace
Movie popcorn
Lotion
Cabbage Patch doll heads
Pine woods while on a walk
Homemade pizza fresh from the oven

I don't know what it will be, but when a smell makes them time travel back to me, I hope they know it is the smell of love.

3 comments:

  1. this made me cry. so so sweet. for our kids, daryl's time travel will most definitely be "bwown chocolate tookies". Yours is probably chicken feed, capri suns and ... do balls of yarn have a smell? :)

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  2. Hay makes me think of those hide and seek games too. :) And Jergen's lotion makes me think of Grandmother. And chocolate chip cookies always remind me of Mama Skaggs.

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    Replies
    1. I had forgotten about the Jergen's. Ahhhh......that must be why I love that smell.

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