Remember

His fishing pole is long gone,
but he happily watches over my garden.

 Now this word of the week challenge by Andrew, leads me to think in a zillion directions.

My senses help me retrieve so many memories, allowing me to remember...

I hear Mungo Jerry's In the summertime on the radio, and am instantly transplanted to the cottage we rented on top of Blue Mountain in the summer of 1970 — I got to sleep in the top bunk of what seemed like the tallest hand made bunk bed, my brother and I went swimming in a pool surrounded by wide open greenery, no fencing, I created paint by numbers masterpieces, ate banana marshmallow candies and sipped on Canada Dry Cream Soda. Life was good.

Every time I walk into a Canadian Tire store and smell the fertilizer, I know it's bad, it is sort of like the yummy smell of a good marker, but it makes me think again of the summer of my youth. I think it is because my brother and I were allowed to get a new water toy for our summer holidays, and Canadian Tire stores always had a massive selection, and where ever we were, there was a Canadian Tire not far away. I associate the chemical smell of fertilizers with the summer fun of my childhood. I know, strange as it sounds, it is a comforting smell to me.

The smell of sawdust makes me remember my Dad. I can recall him working in the garage with the big table saw screeching, cutting wood for his carpentry jobs. His hard hat was on, pencil poised behind his ear and sawdust was flying. Wood and my Dad were a natural marriage. I remember him leaving notes for my Mom on the seat of our Pontiac, written in pencil on small end cuts. What a nice smell.

I can touch my two cats in the night and know which is which by the softness of their fur. Gretel's fur is as soft as a chinchilla. I've never felt a cat so soft. My first cat, Tzi Ling, Poo for short, had a kink in his tail and I loved to try to straighten it. My friend Belinda has a dog, Coffee, with the pigiest curling tail, and I try to straighten that one too. I must have a tail thing.

I remember my Babcia made the most wonderful saffron bread. I can picture her having a table full of the Polish sized loaves. Each slice melted in your mouth. No butter was required, but it did enhance it. I have now discovered a bakery, a Brazilian bakery no less, that makes a bread, that comes pretty darn close to the way Babcia's bread tasted. Yumm.

Each day I wear both my feng shui jade bracelet and my good karma Buddhist prayer bead bracelet and remember where and how I got them. Again, comforting memories for me to remember.

I tend to remember trivial details — when my Mom bought the garden gnome at Eaton's Yorkdale when I was 6ish, that now happily sits under a hosta on my deck, what song we sang in the car when my friend Jeff took me to the high school prom, & especially the years the songs of my youth came out. Perhaps because it was a simpler more uncomplicated time in my life, that I remember this period so well?  Ask me what I did last Wednesday, & I would have to look at my calender.

I try to remember the positive and push out the negative. Perhaps I don't want to remember the negative.  What I remember as being good, far outweighs what I remember as being bad.

Andrew I am finally up to date with my weekly blogs.