once upon a time...

This morning Breck, Elsa and I jumped in the car, after a lovely breakfast of blueberry pancakes, and headed out to Batavia to visit Grandma Jan (or Great Grandma Jammies as she is known to my kiddos).  We wanted to make sure and get out there as Grandma recently had surgery, but we were very much overdue for a visit anyway.  The kids stole the show at lunch, which we ate in the community dinning at the  retirement community where G Jammies resides.  Elsa toddled around saying hi to everyone in sight and she LOVED being the center of all that attention.

We had lunch and then headed back to Grandma's room for a bit to visit.  We finished up our visit with Breck and I taking turns for a potty break, which is how most visit anywhere ends with a pint-sized boy in tow.  As I reached for the bar of Dove soap to wash my hands, I all of a sudden had a memory of being at my Grandma's apartment in Omaha spring into my mind.  When I was little, she had this small dish of soaps in her bathroom that were shaped like roses.  There they lay in the little dish, pale pastels about the size of a quarter, and as a little girl it was the best to carefully choose one out and work up a sudsy lather.

I haven't thought about those little rose-shaped soaps in years - probably since the last time I used them, which was a long, long time ago.  But for some reason today when I turned on the faucet in my Grandma's bathroom, I was 7 years old again and in her apartment only a few blocks from our house.  Memories are funny like that, aren't they?  The way they sometimes sneak up on you when you least expect it.  And I wasn't even aware that the rose soap was a memory of mine, but there it was.  And I love that.  I love that with a scent, a sound, a song, or even in the way the wind is blowing you can be brought back to a completely different place and time in your life.  Like if I catch even a hint of Bath and Body Work's Country Apple scent, I might as well be walking the squeaky wooden halls of Central High School, headed to my freshman English class.

I suppose the downside of this is that it happens with chapters and moments of our life that we'd rather never relive so clearly.  But today, it was great to be 7 years old again, if only for a moment.