Does it happen to you? Something triggers it, a sound or a smell or the weather or someone you run into...and your brain picks you up and drops you back in a moment. It isn't just a memory, it is a journey back, with all the feelings from that time in your life. I like to call it feeling a memory. For me, it is one of the best things in life. I've tried to induce that feeling before. Just last year I found an old shampoo bottle from high school in one of my million bathroom goodies bins and got all excited. I opened the bottle in sweet anticipation of what was to come. I wondered what part of my high school experience I would travel to. Would I feel those awful insecurities again? Or maybe that incredible freedom you won't recognize or appreciate until you are a 30 year old women with a husband, a child and a mortgage. It didn't work. I recognized the smell but stayed right in my seat.
Last night the breeze caught me just right and took me to our old house on New Hampshire. It was a very old house with windows everywhere and screen doors on both the West and East side. When the breeze would blow just right we could lay in bed and feel like we were outside. I was back in our bed on a cold sunny morning. The breeze was perfect, it blew the wind chimes and made the leaves dance in the trees. I could hear the leaves blowing, I could smell the breeze, I could feel the cold blankets under my legs. I felt the freedom of being young and having no obligations on a Sunday morning. Just for a second...
Wade changed the shower curtain liner this morning. The bathroom smells like new plastic. One deep breath and I am back in prenatal classes at the hospital. We are sitting in class with 6 other ladies, all with their hands on their bellies and their hearts on the sleeves. Feeling nervous, excited, joyful, uncertain, courageous, and new depth of love and commitment. Wade is next to me. He is there because he knows what it means to me and looks at me with loving appreciation, pride and concern. He obligingly feels my belly with every kick and hops up whenever I shift uncomfortably or make sound. Then we are leaving class. We are in the hospital parking lot. It is late fall so the sun has set. The air is cold, it smells like winter. It is quiet, most people are at home snuggled in. The sky is clear and the even the stars look a little cold; like tiny ice crystals in a dark sky. We carry our pillows and blankets and I think about how in a few weeks we will be walking into this building with our blankets and pillows for a whole different reason and we will be transformed from two to three. And then the feeling is gone and I spend the whole night trying to figure out how to go back. I sit on the toilet with my eyes closed and the shower curtain on my nose. Nothing. It is like the giddy feeling you get when you are riding in a car and go over a hill but don't realize that you are going over the hill and your stomach jumps and your throat tightens up. No matter how many hills you go over, you won't get that feeling back until you stop paying attention.
Last night the breeze caught me just right and took me to our old house on New Hampshire. It was a very old house with windows everywhere and screen doors on both the West and East side. When the breeze would blow just right we could lay in bed and feel like we were outside. I was back in our bed on a cold sunny morning. The breeze was perfect, it blew the wind chimes and made the leaves dance in the trees. I could hear the leaves blowing, I could smell the breeze, I could feel the cold blankets under my legs. I felt the freedom of being young and having no obligations on a Sunday morning. Just for a second...
Wade changed the shower curtain liner this morning. The bathroom smells like new plastic. One deep breath and I am back in prenatal classes at the hospital. We are sitting in class with 6 other ladies, all with their hands on their bellies and their hearts on the sleeves. Feeling nervous, excited, joyful, uncertain, courageous, and new depth of love and commitment. Wade is next to me. He is there because he knows what it means to me and looks at me with loving appreciation, pride and concern. He obligingly feels my belly with every kick and hops up whenever I shift uncomfortably or make sound. Then we are leaving class. We are in the hospital parking lot. It is late fall so the sun has set. The air is cold, it smells like winter. It is quiet, most people are at home snuggled in. The sky is clear and the even the stars look a little cold; like tiny ice crystals in a dark sky. We carry our pillows and blankets and I think about how in a few weeks we will be walking into this building with our blankets and pillows for a whole different reason and we will be transformed from two to three. And then the feeling is gone and I spend the whole night trying to figure out how to go back. I sit on the toilet with my eyes closed and the shower curtain on my nose. Nothing. It is like the giddy feeling you get when you are riding in a car and go over a hill but don't realize that you are going over the hill and your stomach jumps and your throat tightens up. No matter how many hills you go over, you won't get that feeling back until you stop paying attention.
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