Neptunian Memories

Different scents bring on, sometimes, long forgotten memories. There’s loads on line about the science of this -- about how a fragrance will trigger recollections.. So, it's not just me!

This morning, when I stepped onto the porch to feed our herd of feral felines, the bay was particularly oceany. Salty, briny, yet light -- like a fancy schmancy, expensive cologne. It comes in an elegant, 1920s-ish Deco/Nouveau bottle and is opened on special occasions only.

The memory this morning’s sea bouquet brought up?

My older sister and I running and leaping into the waves on Hammonasset Beach in Connecticut. We, the ever-traveling Maderer famiglia would camp there for a week or more each summer while we visited my mother’s brothers.

I remember all of us laying about in the tent one morning, trying to convince my father to NOT shave, to grow a beard. It was 1968 after all, he’d have been oh-so-hip! My mother looked on with a smile which spoke just one very effective, emphatic word: No. Mother had spoken -- her dictate was written-in-granite law.

I recall, on at least one occasion, chasing my sister down the beach, pelting her with the corpses of teeny tiny silver fishies. Minnows maybe?

Yeah, rotten kid that I was, I was bounding after her, giggling madly while tossing Poseidon’s littlest bairn into her hair.

It was awesome!