A Walk Down Memory Lane

Walks take many forms, and today’s due to oppressive heat and severe storms kept us safe inside doing a walk down memory lane. And thank goodness A. and I didn’t think it would be fun to walk in the rain because as we visited an unexpected bolt of lightening struck a house within eyeshot of mine. SO LOUD! A. and I have covered miles and miles together, many of them in NYC and I hope we get an excuse to schedule an outside walk to write about sometime in the near future. But in the meantime, I’m working on a project and reached out to my cousin A. who lives nearby to help refresh some memories about our grandma, “Grams.”

Revisiting memories, made years apart but at the same house with the same person, was interesting. A. pointed out that she suspected that my memories and her memories would be quite different for the reason that A. was the first grandchild and Grams was just learning how to be a grandma. Several cousins came before me, so by the time I came along being a grandma likely was a well established routine. I grew up with 12 wonderful cousins on my mom’s side of the family, Grams got a lot of practice being a grandma.

Memories, I’ve read, are often trigger by smells, and I certainly have experienced that phenomenon. For my project it was suggested that I see if I could recall any significant smell memories and to build on that. As I considered memories of smells, of course many came to mind, but they weren’t exactly what I was looking for, for this particular project, but interestingly A. shared the same smell memories as I did even though our experiential memories are different. I recalled that I remember Grams’ perfume, Estee Launder. I don’t pass a perfume counter in a department store that I don’t think of Grams and going to L.S. Ayres to get her fragrance. A. referred to Estee Lauder as “Liquid Grams.” I had never heard that before. The other unique smell memory we shared was the smell of Grams’ front porch after a summer rain. It was a screened porch, with metal screens unlike anything you’d find today, and they would naturally get dirty with pollen and dust but cleaning them was next to impossible if you didn’t want to slice your fingertips. Sometimes the dirt in the grooves would get wet and it gave off the most distinctive odor. Not bad, just super earthy. Now, on the rare occasion when conditions are just right, after a rain and that earthy smell rises from the ground, I am transported back to the porch at 15 West 17th St. After Grams moved from that house other relatives moved there so the opportunities to create even more wonderful memories continued. Sadly, the house is gone now, torn down many years ago. There’s a repurposed open area in the space where so many great memories were created. Only the memories are left…well except maybe for the chandelier decoration another cousin and I took before they moved out. I cherish that piece of metal.

‘Til next time.