memory

the funniest things transport me to another time. it seems like its always something unexpected that grabs my psyche and takes it to a different place in my life. twice this happened this week.

on tuesday evening, i was trying to wash my baby boy's hair and found that the bottle of kid shampoo was completely empty (i assume from one or both of the kids filling it with water to squirt bubbles here there and everywhere, but i didnt ask). i started a systematic search through the baskets of soap, lotion, bubble bath and staplers (dont know why staplers are in the same basket, but they are.) i found a small bottle of baby magic baby shampoo. i used it. i began to cry. my child got very confused. the somehow forgotten fragrance of baby shampoo took me right back to bathing newborns in the kitchen sink with the gas stove burning because i was terrified that they might get too cold. i was transported to the house we lived in when the kids were toddlers - the bathroom where they piled bubbles on one another's heads and were pulled out of the bath to be wrapped in hooded towels.
i was glad when that little boy was ready to get out of the bath and the flood of memories stopped.

on wednesday night i took another journey through time. (im starting to feel like michael j. fox and bub is looking like christopher lloyd. we're searching auto trader for a delorean)
**ahem**
FOCUS.

wednesday night-- we were at church singing some hymns which i cannot remember at this particular moment. they were hymns from my childhood. it should be noted that i have almost no childhood memories. gone. vanished. no idea why. --for that reason, this trip to my past was exceptionally odd. i grew up in a church where we didnt really sing hymns, at least not in the years i remember. i guess i was probably age 3-age 11 when there were hymns sung consistently and regularly in our church. sitting in church these days is a little odd for me when they veer away from the current choruses.
recently, our family joined a new church. at this church, we sing hymns. so, wednesday night, as we were singing, i tried tried tried to remember the words, and suddenly i knew them all. every word. and i was taken back to a time of outdoor revivals.- i could hear the crickets and smell the fall air. i could see the big white tent set up in the empty lot across from the church of my youth. these were week-long-revivals we called 'the harvest time crusades'. i hadnt thought of these church services, or the friends i sat with, or my mom playing the piano, or my dad helping to raise the tent, or the hundreds of chairs my brothers, our friends and i lined up around that tent in a million years.

fragrance and song--both so powerful to take me back to times or places i had long forgotten. im glad they work that way. im glad to have memories surprise me whether they make me cry or strangely remind me of what the next word to a song will be.