Lavender Memories

i talked to my older sister yesterday. it's wild the way we see our childhoods so differently, though we lived in the same home, the same circumstances. the human mind--my human mind--always has one up on what i call my 'own' understanding....it's this part of me that calls the shots apart from me, choosing what it wills me to know and when. at times traitor and friend, teacher and pupil.

i bought some lavender down at the market yesterday. i like lavender. it reminds me of home and the big bunch growing by the front step, fuzzy yellow bees embedded in soft purple sprays.

when the long day was done, i went to my lavender lotion i routinely put on before bed. only i went to the wrong bottle, and put on lavender/vanilla---i was instantly removed from my home on the hill in washington and transported to the scary, dirty trailer i lived in with my father after the divorce. i just finished my first year of college, and though having stayed in sketchier places in unfamiliar countries, to be forced to call this dive 'home' was disturbing in too many ways. it was Divorce's daily shout that he won the upper hand and we made his poor subjects. i could never sleep well there. it always smelled of damp, rotting panel board and smoke from the Black & Milds my father newly smoked. i'd put on lavender/vanilla oil my roomie from college gave me, slathering it thick on my hands and sometimes a bit on my nose in the hopes it'd cover up the smell and all it brought with it, lulling me to sleep with the calming scent of lavender, where it grew at my real home once upon a time, by the front step.

lavender--just lavender--reminds me of more recent times, scary and painful, but coming in by the welcoming hand of hope on dark summer nights when everything is crumbling. it's classicly calming.

mint also reminds me of home. home in the summer time, making meadow tea like the mennonites or boiling it on the stovetop, its scent coming in through the open windows and wafting out just the same.

basil reminds me of first summer days with nick in washington, picking it to add to our quesadillas with lime and pepper. though i haven't seen them in over 5 years, i can still smell

fireflies. o, fireflies. i miss these. i once scoped out online if you could buy fireflies or raise them, some way to bring them to the near perfect washington scene. they are sunday summer evenings of volleyball on the zimmerman farm and pizza late at night.

crazy how certain scents can transport us or bring us home, disturb our life or bring comfort to it, making memories near forgotten live for the moment.

"smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.a complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."