Songs, tastes and smells are the eternal echoes of childhood. They ring off the walls of our brain-pans, reminding us of snapshots in time, of firsts and lasts- the perfumed cacophonies of memory.
For me, touch and texture is just as evocative. I can shut my eyes against the images, close my ears to the music, and clamp my jaws against the sweet-and-sours of youth, and still hold in my mind some pivotal remembrances.
The rasp of my father’s cheek against mine, the cool of my mother wiping my mouth with a spit-dampened tissue, the feeling of thick pile carpets under my feet, the tactile absorption I used to used to feel as a child when stroking soft velour fabric in reverse, the coolness of sheets against the damp fevers of childhood illness, the grittiness of sand on a beach- warm under an Indian summer thunderhead, the promising yield of pressed play-dough as small fingers conjured shapeless prehistoric beasts from the mock-creation toy, the this-won’t-hurt sting of an inoculation, the this-is-going-to-hurt-you-more-than-it-hurts-me of a caning, the waxy feeling of the heel of your hand after scribbling with crayons, the warmth of a parent’s hand guiding you through snowy woods, the strange heat versus cold of sitting in front of a bonfire with the night behind you, the surprise of a paper cut, the transference of feeling rooted to the soil as you clasp the patterned bark of a climbing tree, the coolness of glass as you trace the path of a raindrop down a window pane, the yammering pulse of the broken-winged crow you found under a bush, and the terminal feeling of evocativeness when tracing the chiselled words on a marble gravestone.
Close your eyes, reach out, and create memories.
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