I was pushing a shopping cart through the dog food section of Tractor Supply, the right front wheel wobbling as it rolled. The wobbly wheel vibrated the whole cart, wibbly-wobbly with an occasional scratch. It reminded me of a wobbly wheel on a hospital gurney rolling down a darkened hospital hallway full of masked figures in a horror movie I had seen. As I was reaching for the 20 lb. bag of High Protein dog food, I thought to myself, "This is the last place I expected to have a flashback."
It wasn't a loud noise sounding like gunfire to make me duck for cover behind the aisles that had become undergrowth in the jungles of 'Nam kind of flashback. Nor was it a face melting, dragons in the kitchen, hearing colors kind of flashback. It was merely a scent that took me back over 30 years to middle school and the memories associated with that scent.
When I was young, my grandmother had this object that I can only refer to as a sachet. It wasn't a bag or pouch with scented powders or salts, but it was a hard plastic parasol about 6 inches long. It was solid and made to look like the parasol was partially open. Underneath, in the space around the handle, there were holes drilled out for the scent of the salts or crystals to escape. I know it wasn't powder because when I would shake it, it made a sound much like maracas. I thought it smelled like roses. I don't know why I associated that smell with roses, because my grandmother had roses and it didn't at all smell like the ones in her garden did. That smell somehow got stored in my brain, perhaps because of another association...
I was a teenager thinking teenager thoughts and doing teenager things. The school I was attending was a little 2-room schoolhouse with a teacher and a principal who doubled as a second teacher. As a kid, seeing with a kid's eyes, the world was no bigger than what I had seen and where I had been, and that made the world very small indeed. We didn't go anywhere or do anything more than school, church, and the occasional trip to the mall. Through those eyes, we didn't have anything. As I now see it, I truly wasn't aware of just how good I had it. We were not dirt-poor and we were far from rich, but we had what we needed. This school was a private church school with tuition that was mostly paid from someone else's pocket. I didn't know or care to know. I thought cleaning the church every week paid for it. Looking back, I was truly lucky to be there at all. And I'm glad I was able to be there, because teenage thoughts and teenage things included less and less attention to toys and more attention to things that mattered, mainly noticing that girls really weren't that icky after all.
Her name was Tamara. She had an older sister named Tonya that other boys thought was pretty, and she was, but my attention was on Tamara. She had the allure of tan-skin, dark hair, and dark almond eyes. Perhaps I was intrigued by the way she would talk to me like no other girl had. Her father was a sprint car racer and she would tell me about weekends at the dirt track and the thrill of the roaring engines of the cars as they slid around the corners and sprinted down the straightaways. I was into cars at the time and I would buy this magazine called "CARtoons" that we would sometimes look at together in the classroom during lunchtime. I think she was my first real "friend-that-was-a-girl" that I would do stuff with that didn't involve getting cootie shots afterwards.
She smelled like my grandmother's sachet. To borrow a quote from the movie 'Sin City,' "She smelled like angels ought to smell."
I stood there in the dog food section with the scent of memory lingering in the air. Instantly, everything it reminded me of hit me: My grandmother's sachet, a rose-but-not-a-rose aroma, an elementary crush. I was time traveling with a scent that my nose recognized as something my brain had stored in an easily accessible place. Every time I smell that scent; every time...these things always come to mind and to heart.
I looked around me, not knowing which woman was unknowingly transporting me to this other time. It could have been any one of the ladies purchasing horse feed, ugly sweaters for coddled canines, live chicks, or bales of hay. It really didn't matter who it was. I know it was a woman; it was always a woman, because it was a womanly smell. I associate it as such. It is grandma. It is a flower. It is pubescent puppy love.
It's a wondrous thing, this memory machine of ours. These little snippets of times remembered are triggered by the smallest thing; an object, a scent, a song, a certain place. There was a time that I couldn't listen to music I loved because it invoked the memory of someone who introduced me to all sorts of new music. There was a time I couldn't listen to a certain band because of the memory of seeing them live so many times together. There's a little restaurant/bar that I could go the rest of my life and not step foot into again because it reminds me of the beginning of an end. Images of cats and boxes and bookshelves equals overwhelming thoughts of regret and guilt. There's a booth at a restaurant that will forever be the place where I first met someone. There's another booth in another restaurant that still echoes the words spoken in love by a shaky voice from a man down on one knee.
These memories are mostly good ones, but in a melancholy way, for the situations preceding and following them are done. They're over, never to be lived again. I don't begrudge these memories. They are a part of me, just like my deformed toe from a broken bone, the scars hidden under my beard, my well-worn toboggan or the age-old Birkenstock clogs that get repaired instead of replaced. I'd rather have them than not. But new ones are being made every day, for good or bad. And just like the old ones, these new ones will be stored in a place of quick and easy access. It may not be the best place to store them. Some will say to put them deep down, to not think about them.
But you know what? I put them near the surface because that's where I want them. And perhaps that's the best place of all
