Rolling Forward

I love the way an odor or fragrance can just transport you to another space in time and bring back an event or local so perfect you can see things in your minds eye that have been years forgotten. This morning As I headed out the door for the train I was “slapped in the face” but the smell of leaves, wet wood, cement and a host of other smells which took me back to the farm I was raised. Early mornings, 5:30 a.m., or so would find my brother and I would at the South end of our pastures “pushing “ our five milkers north toward the milking barn. Our levis would be soaked from the morning’s dew walking behind the sleepy, cud chewing guernsey’s their bags swollen with milk doing the cow waddle.

As I roll toward the train station I try to exhale my breath and then slow breath my next breath taking care to draw the scented oxygen in as slowly as possible through my noise in hopes to focus as much air as possible over the fragrance receptors to sharpen the memory as much as possible. But it seems that I cannot expand my lungs long enough to grasp that one little memory which seems to be hiding in the very back of my mind. I try three or four times before I have to refocus my attention on driving my power chair. I notice the gang of magpies which inhabit the trees further west on the industrial road I am following to the train station. The whole gang is up yanking and squawking and stretching their wings with the prelim flight for the day.

At South end of our pasture was a stand of locus trees; huge monsters growing at the base of the New York Canal. The canal was the source of all the farmers irrigation in this area. The trees , I think, grew huge here I think because of all the water in the area. The trees had become the home of five or six magpie gangs. The gangs would rattle and chatter in the evenings till dark then quiet down and sleep through the night but would waken when my brother and would get the cattle which loved to sleep their summer nights away under the locus’s. All our irrigation was delivered to the main ditch right at the foot of the canal banks—a torrent of water would bubble and gurgle in a small pond where the ditches originated. The smells or summer turning to autumn were intense. Hay freshly mown and peppermint saturated the morning air with brush strokes of decaying leaves, wet wood and fresh running water. The year could have been 1959, 1961 or 1964. The sun would still not rise for 45 minutes and the whole day still lay ahead.

I shake my head and return to the ‘Here and now’ I am closing in on the train station. Traffic is picking up and I must focus on my driving. I must have been lost in the flash back for at least ten minutes. I shake my head as I leave the “then and when” and cross the railroad tracks shaking the last thoughts of magpies, peppermint and dew covered levies out of my head. I smell diesel fumes from the buses idling next to the sidewalk and cigarette smoke drifting from the hackers sucking in their last “nic” before crossing the yellow line and accessing the train. I miss the “then and when” but and glad to be in the ‘hear and now’. I smile and roll forward.