Honeysuckle Chains
April 23, 2008
There is a road I drive on every day between my house and my life. For the past couple of days I have had this strange nostalgic feeling as I curve down it’s windy twists and turns. I start to catch this sweet smell, my mind spins for a second and then it is gone. I thought maybe it was just a feeling that brought back memories of when I was a kid, driving on this road to my grandparents lake house. But I have driven this road now for two years and never had this feeling. So why now? Why this week?
Today it came barreling at me out of nowhere. In fact, I was not even thinking about it at the time. I was driving with the windows cracked, listening to a Beverley Cleary audio book with my kids, thinking about my grocery list. And then I smelled it again, only this time it was so much stronger. The sweet and fresh smell of honeysuckle permeated my nostrils. I blinked…almost squinting, struggling for the memory to make itself known. I thought about how much I love the smell of fresh honeysuckle…And then I was back. I was seven years old, in the backyard of our little green house, pumping on an old rusty swing with my best friend Clay. A long and flowing honeysuckle chain around my neck. I remembered the Jordache jeans I was wearing. The rainbow shirt with the white collar. The snaggly tooth that hung conspicuously over my lip. And the pure joy that I felt as I kicked higher and higher on that swing, trying to see over Clay’s fence. All the while, my necklace flapping back and forth in my face. My body creating a breeze that carried the fragrance permanently into my soul’s memory!
Why this memory? Why this day? I have smelled honeysuckle a million times since then and never recalled this. Sense of smell…what a strange and wonderful gift!
I don’t know where that flower is hiding within the back roads of Conroe. But you can be sure I will be driving down that road with my windows open, head hanging out like my brother’s yellow lab, lapping up all the honeysuckle I can file away in my olfactory system . You never know when another memory might want to hang on for a future ride.
Do you have a Honeysuckle story/memory?
Tags: honeysuckle, nostalgia, olefactory, sense of smell
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at 6:28 pm
Awesome! We have honeysuckle in our yard too and I’ve been smelling it and reliving childhood memories too.
I never made a necklace but did pull out the vines for the one whopping drop of dew from time to time.
at 7:43 pm
Well, considering the fact that for some odd strange reason, i have no sense of smell, i choose the sense of sight. Lately, for some reason every time I see a motor home passing me on the road, it brings me back to the age of 5-7. A time where our grandparents would take us on 2-3 week vacations across country. I’ve been to almost every state in the US… traveling side by side with my papa, grandma, mom, older sis and bro. Its funny because most people would say with an expierence or opportunity like that, they would remember and cherish the great things like seeing the great redwood forest in california, feeding the animals at yellowstone national park, throwing pretend tea over a replica boat in boston, touring jamestown where the historic pocahantas (sp?) once walked the streets, or just seeing all the great things you can see in Washington DC… Where at that time in my life, the one thing I enjoyed the most on all on my trips, was getting back to the RV park, so I could play with the other kids at the playground! Even though I wasn’t old enough to really understand all the great things I got to experience, I now want to share experiences like that with my nieces and nephew, my kids, and even grandkids some day! So basically what I’m saying is Shellee… LETS BUY A MOTOR HOME… Kent can be the driver!
at 5:53 pm
The sense of smell is incredibly powerful. I read somewhere that it is connected to long term memory (I don’t remember how, but it will make this story much nicer) I have memory bursts from time to time. Remember when bandaids came in cans? Everytime I open a can of bandaids, it makes me think of being a child. The smell of Noxema makes me think of being a teenager.
This morning I opened my refrigerator and saw the lemonade from my “lemonade diet.’ When I took the lid off of it, it brought back the horrible memories of the day before when I tried to do a cleansing fast. Some memories are best forgotten. But because that sense of smell is so darn lasting, I will forever remember that horrible day of cleansing everytime I smell lemons or maple syrup!
at 6:57 pm
I too will always think of your cleansing fast when I see lemons… simply from the detailed description I received during lunch today. Thanks for that!