Stepping in the way, way, way back machine

Think me strange, but I enjoy a déjà vu moment now and then.  You know, those times when you feel like the record skipped and you're doing it all over again.  But the older I get the more these moments lean towards the “now why did I come in here?” variety.  Sometimes a smell or sound can trigger a trip back in time.  For example, I can step into the R.C. Cook Union on the USM campus and the smell of the building will immediately transport me back to 1980s when I was a student there.  The smell of that place is exactly the same today as it was 25+ years ago despite the upgrades and remodels that have been done on it every few years since it was built.  One foot in the door and an intake of breath and I’m back in my purple parachute pants, pink t-shirt and high tops sitting in a booth with friends, or waiting on friends, or maybe spying on friends of friends, or just trying to be seen by those whom I want to see me.

Daddy c. 1943

Speaking of smells, there is a certain one that always reminds me of my daddy, too.  It is the caustic odor of merthiolate.  Merthiolate, or meth-i-lade as I call it, was his go-to; a virtual panacea for any irritated skin condition.  I remember showing him my cuts and scratches only to regret it because of the burning sting that would follow as he dotted the orangey/pinkish liquid over my bo-bos (as he called them).  I would whine, “blow on it”, and he would and then all would be well.  It was a common sight to see Daddy covered in orangey/pinkish dots himself. He was a consummate self-healer.  I guess his years as a medic in WWII taught him enough to suit him.  He saw no need for doctors as long as merthiolate was still on the market.  He kept a bottle in his travel kit (i.e. cigar box with a rubber band around it) along with a shaving brush and some other toiletries.  That kit now belongs to me, still in his suitcase where he kept it (of course, where else would you keep a travel kit?), and if I want to remember the essence of my daddy all I have to do is open the bottle of  meth-i-lade and release the genie.

Mama 1951

The smell of good food cooking is the epitome of my mother, but my earliest memories of her scent would be if you took a couple of packs of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, added a pack of Juicy-Fruit, a pack of Viceroy cigarettes, some loose change and shook it all together in a vinyl handbag.  Open the handbag put your face in and breathe deeply.  My mother will appear.  Ask any of my siblings and I’m sure they would agree.  That smell was her scent only in my early years.  She gave up smoking when I was in the seventh grade after she had polyps removed from her throat, so the Viceroys were taken out of the mix.  Unlike my daddy’s attitude towards the medical field, doctors were as influential to my mother as Jesus.  When her doctor told her to quit smoking or else, she put down the cigarettes and never smoked another.  Sadly, she never quite grasped the idea of second-hand-smoke-is-as-bad-as-smoking--or worse. 

The reason I am even thinking about buried memories is because of a song I heard yesterday.  It’s not a new song; in fact it’s very old.  I don’t know when my enchantment with this song began, but one day, years ago, I heard it and I was taken back somewhere so deep in my mind that I’ve never consciously been before.  The song is “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller.  The first notes of the song can put me in a trance until the very last note is played.  Not only am I aware that I am spacing out, but I get very emotional in certain parts of the song and I have actually sobbed (probably in the safety of my car) at times.   Sometimes I wonder if I was covertly hypnotized and “Moonlight Serenade” is my trigger.  Yesterday morning the song shuffled in my iPod play and for the rest of the day it was all I could do not to download several versions of the song so I could play back to back.  I felt like Jerry Fletcher in the Conspiracy Theory with his uncontrollable need to buy Catcher in the Rye.  Ironically, helicopters have been flying low over my house lately.   And just last night my husband saw something flying at just above tree level out back, and before the night was over I surrendered and downloaded The Glenn Miller Story soundtrack version of “Moonlight Serenade”.  I think I might be on to something here.

I don’t know why I think the things I think, or feel the things I feel, but I am always intrigued at how the mind works to make all these things possible.  I can’t remember what I wore to work last Wednesday, but the smell of an old building, merthiolate and spearminty/juicy fruity/tobacco, and the notes of an old song popular way before my time unlock memories untold.  Now if I could just remember my Amazon password.  I've got more downloading to do.