sense...

The senses can be pretty amazing. Isn't it funny how you can smell something in the present and all of a sudden, you're transported back to another time, another memory, another place where that exact smell was first had? I would have to say the sense of smell is the strongest of the senses as far as the ability to take you to a completely different time and place. With our eyes, it's so hard to remember how things might have been when you're looking at them in the moment. Like how I know that growing up, the backyard of my childhood home was completely different; there was a back porch, a patio and no screened-in deck...but it's so difficult to imagine that because of what I see there now.

However, close your eyes and breathe deeply the scent of something you may have always known or just encountered once in a blue moon and the memories of those experiences linked to that scent will come flooding back. In some ways, I love that. There are so many things that I obviously can't relive, but having the memory attached to something fragrant and delicious is such a treasure. Like how the smell of apple fritters always takes me back to our vacations at the cottage on Silver Lake in Michigan; freshly baked apple pie puts me right in my mother's kitchen; the crisp scent of pine brings back memories of Christmases old and new; sawdust, oil fumes and cigarette smoke make me recall sitting in my father's shed watching him work, and the dank smell of an old basement reminds me of my great-grandparents' house. Just this morning, I was making banana bread, and the smell wafting from the oven made me think of my grandmother's kitchen.

And yet there are those odors that bring with them sadness and perhaps fear. The smell of carnations has a way of reminding me of the various funerals I've attended throughout my lifetime and the loss of dearly loved ones.

It's so easy to take our senses for granted and to flippantly push those memories away. But it's so important to cherish them as long as we're able because they truly are the link between our past and our future.