Yesterday morning I opened my motel door to the scents of childhood and growing up....the smell wafted into my memories of long ago and recently...
I am here to almost finishing my parent's estate papers...items I never imagined years ago when we moved here in my fourth grade year...
The smell of the river where we swam and camped nearby...
The Redwoods surrounding our home...
The ocean we watched...walked on the beach...harvested crabs...
The bench from which we watched the sunset from after my mother's passing and yet again after my dad's....
The church I grew up in and later celebrated my husband and my wedding....
The schools I attended....
The gatherings of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles for birthday, holidays and picnics galore...
Hunting moonstones and picking raspberries at grandma's house....Or playing little women in her attic....
The myriad of times we visited, bringing children and later, grandchildren ...
How those years have flown...it seems like eons ago and yesterday all in one...
My cousin and I went to the cemetery to add new flowers to gravesites....a ritual we always did for birthdays, memorial days, or just when we had lots of garden flowers...we rarely bought flowers....cleaning up the sites a little...saying hello again...even though we know they aren't there, but just remembering and shedding a tear or four, for those who have gone before...her parent, mine, grandparents, aunts, uncles and even now those in our generation...remembering fun times and wishing we could talk those long gone, telling them of our lives now...and how they would have replied....loving us...
Going back "home", smelling scents of childhood, walking old neighborhoods, visiting graveyards....for me brings mostly good memories .... Love shown there, activities, people...aged and new...blessings I took for granted....and now long gone...to make way for new memories with new generations....taking time to "smell the scents" in the future...hoping they will look back as well to fun times, good memories, blessings...passed on and on...
Thank YOU for family, for scents of childhood...Your blessings abounding...walks in neighborhoods of memories....Your timelessness ....and ever present Presence.....
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11-12, 14-15 There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.
I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it.
God does it so that people will fear him.
Whatever is has already been,and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.
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