It might be an aroma or a quick glimpse of something that triggers a memory snippet.  For me, it is often a smell.  Fresh bread baking immediately finds me standing in the school cafeteria with a tray in my hand waiting for a delicious hot yeast roll to land beside my mashed potatoes.

Last night, I was in the kitchen putting away groceries, when my husband placed a bag on the counter.  It was a bag of fresh Fredericksburg peaches.  They had been picked three days earlier.  Without moving closer to the bag I began to smell the peaches.  Not the ones on the counter, but the fresh ripe peaches hanging from the limbs of the two peach trees which grew in my childhood backyard.   

The smell of those peaches brought a kaleidoscope of memories.  In the heat of the day, my mother would send me out to pick a few peaches.  She sliced the warm peach in half, removed the pit and poured cold evaporated milk over the peach before sprinkling it liberally with granulated sugar.  I think she invented sweetened condensed milk long before Eagle Brand marketed it!

I can’t even remember how it tasted, but I remember the anticipation and the contrast of the warm peach against the cold milk.  Yum!   I haven’t thought of eating those cream soaked peaches in years.  My husband has brought in peaches countless times and laid them on the counter.  I’m not sure why yesterday triggered the memory, but I’m glad it did.

It made me think of my Mom and smile.  A momentary sadness tugged at my heart as I miss those days with my mother but it was soon replaced by happy memories.

My thoughts followed the path to other memories of time spent around and under the peach tree.  My friends from next door would stop by and we would sit under those two trees.  We invented fairy tale worlds and planned our future.  You know important stuff, like who would we sit by next year in school and how would we fill our days next week.

I also thought about my mother telling me to behave or she would switch my legs with a peach tree limb.  Now those trees had thin pliable limbs that could sting like fire.  Not that I would know!  The threat of having to go cut a peach tree limb and bring it back to my mom was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.  I’m pretty sure I was never spanked with one, but I remember the dread well.

 

After dinner last night, I pulled a peach from the bag on the counter.  I rinsed the peach and bit into the crisp fruit.  As juice dribbled down my chin, I closed my eyes.  For the moment I was ten years old, sitting beneath the peach tree, playing make believe with my siblings.