Please post the link to your weekly Slice of Life in the comments to this post.
Remember, you may also complete the weekly Slice of Life in your Writer's Notebook.
Mr. Ross’s store: I remember going with my dad to drop off a deer to be processed. I remember staring, mouth watering, at bags of frozen strawberries, thinking of the sweet, summer happiness on the other side of the freezer-case door. I remember the Jolly Green Giant that hung at the back of the canned food aisle from thin chain links pricking his shoulders. I remember the “snow balls” my dad used to love, and that we’d buy him as a treat, and that I tell my husband “Oh, my dad used to love those,” every time we see them now. I remember the dark cement floor aisles and the burn of thirst on the drive home when I’d picked Funyuns instead of a pop for a snack. I remember when I was too little to bravely articulate to my mom that I’d put a few coins of her change into one of the whirling plastic cones for something like “Make-a-Wish” and instead told her I’d dropped it on the sidewalk and couldn’t find it when she made me go back and look.
This is a time and batch of memories that are from the “making me” time in my life; sometimes I look back now and when I wonder, “How’d ‘little me’ get through, totally enchanted and engrossed by the zipping, flipping kaleidoscope dance of life?”
When I first smelled a different known smell and was transported back to my Baka’s sun-filled dining room and the smell of coffee cake dough with golden raisins rising in a large plastic bowl covered with a crisp, floral kitchen towel, I knew they were right to say “smell is the sense with the strongest tie to memory.”
And, I know Cadbury Mini-Eggs, my favorite candy, by the sweet note of composure encased in a pastel, sugar-coating.
As soon as I knew, when I came in the doors this afternoon, I charged up the stairs into the apartment, hanging my coat up and leaving everything else beside me on the floor and couch while I now write about the smells and the memories that came. I was compelled, empowered to think through life and the moments that get us, get me feeling really real. Feeling happily me, happy with my life and looking forward to new memories. So much so that I kept my eyes closed while writing the first paragraph because I wanted to be transported back to Mr. Ross’s shop and see with vivid eyes the things I saw, the slivers of memory that came through like sunrays through a church window of memory.