Reflections

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  1. O.Christina

    While being sick, our mother would ask for what we would like to eat. She used to cook really deliciously for all as an expression of her love and care for us all. My favorite as a kid when recovering have been simple fried potatoes, she could make them like no other and I love the smell of fried potatoes – and of course eating them – until today.

    1 year ago
  2. E
    Estelle

    My grandma’s cider, reminds me of the holidays a time for community with family shared over the best meals of the year.

    1 year ago
  3. Robin Ann

    I inherited my Mother’s love of the Ocean. I love the smell of the sea! Being around the ocean brings me joy and happy thoughts of my Mom too. Yesterday I walked near Narragansett Bay and several seals were out basking and splashing in the water. You needed a good camera or binaculors to see them better. An awe moment!

    1 year ago
  4. M
    Mr. William

    The smell of rain on hot tarmac. A lot of my fondest memories were when I was back in Virginia as a kid, enjoying the scent of a rainstorm on heated tarmac while playing with my friends. Simpler, more innocent, and less troubling times.

    1 year ago
  5. Brooke

    Whenever I smell salty beach air, it reminds me of a time where I felt peak happiness. In high school, I joined the cross country team. Prior to my season, our team took a trip to the beach. The trip consisted of waking up around 6 am to run a long run in the morning, spending the middle of the day relaxing and bonding with the team, and then a short run at night before dinner. This was a week long trip where I was able to make meaningful connections with my teammates and train my body for the season ahead. Running really cleared my head. My best mental state was during my cross country season and I felt good physically. My body not only felt healthy but showed results quickly. The memories and relationships I made on that trip will stay with me forever, and I am always brought back to the great memories whenever I smell that crisp ocean air.

    1 year ago
  6. Rabbit

    I love the smell of fresh rosemary and also lavender. I don’t know why but something probably happened to help me enjoy it so much. I often say the streets of Heaven will be lined with it. I also like the smell of a meal being cooked which probably relates to hunger, satisfaction, and someone loving someone else enough to cook for them.

    1 year ago
    1. Michele

      I hope jasmine is included in that lovely line, lol – that is one of my favorites:)

      1 year ago
  7. luv-1-nutter

    The smell of the coffee being freshly roasted But instead of coffee when the Northern snowbirds used to come down to the S. Mohave deseert and had set up trading booths stalls one of the snowbirds used to have an old fashioned rotisserie that would hold around 100 lb peanuts at a time to slow roast and turning it over and over until the little nuts inside we’re lightely roasted. Plus the smell of the rain on the desert sands which then turns it into desert cement also making it impossible to dig our out houses. Muktyananda Swami had written there are an unlimited number of smells and colors.

    1 year ago
  8. Barb C

    There’s a particular combination I haven’t smelled in many years. It’s a blend of bacon sizzling, pancakes on the griddle, and coffee, with a hint of pine trees because we’re in a trailer in the woods. My parents used to take my younger sister and I on camping trips in the summer and this is the smell of Mom making breakfast as I’m waking up in the upper space where we slept. It means good food and playing in the woods. I grew up surrounded by wheat fields and being in a forest was an adventure every time, with so much to explore. Even as a kid I knew a lot of work went into preparations for these trips, but I don’t think I showed appreciation or gratitude then–it was just what our family did at some point each summer. In hindsight I’m so grateful that my dad made sure he took time off from work for extended trips and that we could afford to do that kind of thing, and that my mom was so thorough in her preparations and such a good cook working with the constraints of a tiny trailer stovetop. I have so many memories all blended together of trips to Oregon and California (we lived in northern Idaho so this meant Dad did a lot of driving). My sister and I always checked out a big pile of library books for the trip, I took my knitting, and we passed the time on the road singing out the windows, reading, or napping.

    1 year ago
  9. Yram

    The smell of freshly baked bread. The memory of it, helps me appreciate my maternal grandma who was a strong influence in my life. The visual that goes with it, is melting butter and a touch of honey as my grandma and I laugh. Thanks for the question.

    1 year ago
  10. Michele

    Nanny’s German Potato Salad. The smell of bacon and vinegar, mmmmm. so delicious. My Nanny was such a great cook, besides this, she also made delicious Schnecken, Strudel, and Lebkuchen cookies for Thanksgiving/Xmas usually. I’m glad there are many of us in the family who still make the German Potato Salad. I should try the others, haven’t yet.

    1 year ago
    1. Rabbit

      My husband’s aunt made the best potato salad ever. She told me once the secret was adding some Italian dressing. Her daughter told me recently, that her mom said the secret was dehydrated onions. Auntie has passed on now, it sounds like she may have taken the real secret with her. 😊

      1 year ago
  11. Pilgrim

    Bacon, eggs and potatoes fried in the skillet. At our summer cottage, this is the Sunday breakfast my Dad would make before we would make our way to the beach for the day, and/or he would take the boat out for a day of fishing. The cottage was our place of relaxation and fun, a break from daily chores, or for my parents, going to work. Sweet memories.

    1 year ago
  12. Carol

    The smell of a chuck roast coming out of the oven or a skillet full of chicken frying on the stove makes me think of Sunday dinners when I was a kid. It’s a good memory of family gathered around the table for the noon meal after Mass. The other aroma I remember is from my years in New Orleans as a young wife and mother. My husband and our neighbor John would go crabbing on Saturday morning in the bayou close by our home. That afternoon John’s wife and I would boil those crabs and we would have a feast. They had two daughters. We had a son and a daughter and we would gather around the picnic table in their back yard to chowed down on mouthwatering boiled crabs and enjoy watermelon for dessert. Then we would play lawn darts. The smell of crab boil seasonings is an aroma one never forgets and the friendship of good neighbors will never be forgotten. Thanks for the memories.

    1 year ago
    1. Joseph McCann

      Carol it is nice to read someone else use dinner for the noon meal. I always refer to the evening meal as supper because my maternal grandparents always spoke of breakfast, dinner and supper. They were from Tennessee.

      1 year ago
  13. Avril

    I’ve enjoyed reading all of the other reflections. I’m trying to be thoughtful. There’s one thing about enjoying the smell and anticipating what’s coming next. My husband is a very casual person, and when he puts on his cologne, I know it’s date night. I love the smell, and I get excited about spending time alone as the two people who fell in love, and not just his parents and doing the day-to-day grind. But as far as a memory, plantains. When we go out to eat, and I smell plantains it makes me think of my grandmother. She wasn’t an extremely affectionate person. In fact, she was kind of cold. But, she showed love through her food and plantains were my favorite thing that she made. I’ve never tasted any others that were as good as hers.

    1 year ago
  14. Laura

    The delicious smell of bacon frying reminds me of my mother preparing breakfast for us before school, Christmas mornings when my kids were young, and now visits with them as adults.

    1 year ago
  15. Joseph McCann

    The smell of rain coming and the smell of the rain falling on the dry earth. I live in an area with an average rainfall of seven inches. We had very little snowfall in the mountains and none here in the San Luis Valley floor winter of “01-02”. Then no rain from the summer monsoon season. The extremity of drought in 2002 was calculated by studying tree rings as there was no written weather history of such dryness. It was dubbed the driest in 300 years. the drought of tree ring record. 80 to 100 year old cottonwoods died. I read that the soil must be bone dry 16 feet deep, the depth of cottonwood roots.

    The smell of rain is one that brings immediate gratitude to my soul. I and about 40,000 folks who lived in this 5000 square mile valley lived history during that drought. The moisture finally came and the earth rejoiced.

    1 year ago
    1. Barb C

      I remember learning the word “petrichor”–the smell of rain on dry soil–and thinking how perfect it was that there’s a word for that distinctive scent. Looking up its origins this morning I learned that it’s formed from the ancient Greek words for rock/stone and the word for the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods. That seems so apt, thinking of how essential rain was for you and everyone in the valley.

      1 year ago
      1. Michele

        I, too, remember learning of that word and have it bookmarked in my Pinterest account, lol.

        1 year ago
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