Do you ever catch a scent that brings you to someplace other than where you are?

I stepped outside this evening and caught that scent. The grass isn’t freshly mown. It was mowed a couple of days ago. That turned out to be perfect because I caught the faint smell of the wild flowers and of the warm air itself uninhibited by the newly cut grass smell.

Suddenly, I was 12 years old again. I was instantly transported back to my grandmother’s sun porch where my generation congregated during bath time. Then the memory added the faint smell of Dove soap (which I actually could smell because I’d just washed my hands), and Breck shampoo.

All of us cousins got to hang out on the sun porch while we waited for our turns for a bath. The adults probably would have preferred us to just be inside and stay inside after we were washed, but that would hardly be fair when the cousins we saw so rarely were still on the porch laughing and talking and getting to know each other all over again.

I remembered being told to be careful in my bare feet in the yard.  The adults would have preferred me (and all of us) to be shod, but I’d never really liked shoes. The whole point of summer was (and still is) to run around barefoot!

And then someone would get a nasty bee sting on the foot and we would have to endure the “told-ya-so” before we went out barefoot again. Or was that me and my childhood neighbors? Either way, it was the best of times.

It’s rare that I miss my past, but every time I catch that scent, I’m taken to a place in the past that I love and hold dear in my heart.