Maria's Memories

I have just arrived back on campus after being home for an entire week. Thanksgiving break was supposed to start on Tuesday, but my mom and sister were returning from New York on Sunday night and spontaneously decided to pick me up on their way home. It was amazing. I stayed home for a few days just relaxing, visiting my grandma, and finishing up a research paper. Then my friends came home and I got to spend some quality time with them, and then my big family for Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving, my friends again to say farewell, and then my family again on the last day. This was the first time that I went home and was able to find the perfect balance between relaxing, as college is exhausting, seeing my family, who I miss bucketloads, and seeing my friends, who I love to death and wish I was able to see more. It was really nice and made me feel utterly content. Usually, when I go home, I am very ready to come back to school by the end of my visit. I miss my friends and hate missing out on memories. But since we were all home this time, I was able to just relax and enjoy the people I was with.

Anyway, I am in a good mood, which, as I am sure you know, is a phenomenal (a word I have been overusing these past few days, I really like the ring of it and its connotation) sensation. 

While I was home, my father and I had an interesting conversation about memories. I recently learned in psych class that the sense of smell is the sense most heavily associated with memories. That smell triggers more memories than any other sense. I brought this up with my father, and this elicited a conversation about memories and smell and nostalgia. My father believes that people only think that smell is the strongest because Hollywood often shows grieving people smelling the clothes of those who passed away. I argue that it is the other way around; Hollywood adapted this style and scene because it is true -- you really do remember the most things about a person when you are smelling them or smelling things that you smelled while creating fond memories with them.

This, of course, got me thinking. I shared an example with my father, about how I have a very strong association between the smell of nursing home (like a musty bread smell, or like a freshly baked eucharist smell mingled with incense) and the movie Harold and Maude. Whenever I encounter the smell, I immediately think of that strange film about a young boy falling in love with a quirky elderly lady. I do not recommend the movie. I saw it when I was super young and do not have any fond memories of it, it was extremely weird and is considered a "cult classic." Whenever someone mentions the movie, I smell the smell. I could not tell you about a single scene of that movie. I watched it as a tiny little child with my family in our living room. It was probably a DVD that Netflix mailed to us, or possibly even before that, when my mom went online on the bulky desktop to order a movie from pay-per-view. I loved those days. Movies were rare and cherished properly when we had to work so hard for them. We chose very carefully. Except for the one time my brother made us order Shark VS. Plane or something stupid like that. Sharknado, maybe? We now own that stupid movie because we accidentally sent back Like Mike in its place. Anyway, I have other memories associated with smell.

The smell of spring. Warm rain that has just recently fallen, leaving traces of mud and damp concrete in its wake. Worms crawling out of the dirt and laying out on my driveway. The beginnings of flowers and buds on trees. Wet dog. Green grass. Humidity hanging in the air, wiping away the last traces of winter and its remaining dirty, stained snow. This smell is distinct and clear to me, I can smell it now just thinking about it. I am sure this is a smell many people have stored in their memory, but it probably is associated with different memories for everyone. For me, this smell brings vivid images of playing basketball in my old neon green hoody, my friend's old gray soccer hoody that I stole, and this old red hoody I had. I remember stepping over worms and playing one on one versus my neighbors. My driveway holds a lot of memories of me playing basketball, but the spring was always my favorite time to play. I eagerly waited for winter to move out so that I could take back my driveway to play basketball. Basketball used to be a part of my daily routine. For the first fourteen years of my life, really, I played basketball every single day in some way. I always say that I will one day write a book, which will be made into a movie because I think images would make it better, that takes place exclusively in my driveway. The seasons would change and the main characters would age. The activities in the driveway would change too. From obstacle courses, to filming movies, to playing IT on our bikes, to bootcamp with my brother, to endless scenes of playing basketball with my friends and neighbors while talking, heart to hearts with the people in my life while playing catch, snowball fights, building snow forts, and then, finally, cars coming in and out, and shorter bits of conversations in rushed voices. This compilation of images summarizes my entire childhood. The people would change. From my neighbors, to my family, to my friends, who came and went throughout my life. 

The smell of my renovated basement. New carpet and fresh paint. Leather from the couch. This weird scent thing my mom put in the basement. A flowery smell mixed with construction and the overall smell of newness. This smell, which has officially died away in my physical basement five years later but still remains in my brain when I think about it, elicits memories of my friendships my freshman year. The endless hours I spent down there with my new friends, lounging on the new and stiff couch watching Netflix and talking into the wee hours. Getting to know the people who I loved in high school, one of which I still am close with today. We renovated my basement for my sister's graduation party, so the timing was such that as we got a new basement I got new friends -- I had just started high school. The smell and the memories go together. The blankets and snacks and movies. The laughs and the fun times. Many of which no longer contain depth, as most of the friendships have dwindled, but plenty of which mean the world to me. I love that smell.

Of course, smell is not the only sense that conjures memories. In fact, hearing, songs in particular, but also voices, contain large doses of memories for me. When I hear the song "Someone Like You" by Adele, I am transported back to eighth grade, sitting by the pond in my friend's neighborhood, talking about losing friends. When I hear "When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade" by The Boy Least Likely, I am suddenly sitting on the ugly green leather of my morning bus in eighth grade, dramatically looking out the window and thinking about how miserable how I was. When I hear "Merry Happy" by Kate Nash, I am in my mom's convertible with my teammate driving to basketball in the spring time of sixth grade. When I hear "Skeleton" by Kate Nash, I am in my friend's room screaming the lyrics as a way to vent about my shitty middle school experiences. "Hold On" by Alabama Shakes and "Atlas Hands" by Benjamin Francis Leftwich both leave me thinking about walking my dog on a cold winter night, in the dark, dwelling on life's complexities from the viewpoint of a freshman in high school. "Cough Syrup" by Young the Giant and "Do I Wanna Know?" by the Arctic Monkeys brings me back to the first day of Christmas break, listening to the first CD of many that my friend gave me. Music started it all. "Royals" by Lorde and "Teenage Dirtbag" by the Ukele Orchestra of Great Britain bring to mind my sister trying to sing the lyrics as she drove me to and from school my freshman year, particularly in the winter ... there are plenty more but I think you get the point. 

Sometimes I really enjoy remembering all of these things and times about my life. I enjoy looking back at where I was and the progress I have made since. I like holding on to people I no longer communicate with in this realm of memories. And I like to hope that these people remember and cherish the same memories I do. Toni Morrison, in her book Beloved, assures me that we all share memories and that places and things can instantaneously deliver us back in time to a shared place:

I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened. "Can other people see it?" asked Denver. "Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it's you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It's when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. Where I was before I came here, that place is real. It's never going away. Even if the whole farm--every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there--you who never was there--if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. ... "If it's still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing ever dies." Sethe looked right in Denver's face. "Nothing ever does," she said.  -- Toni Morrison.

When I read this passage, which I adore, as it reassures me that memories are meaningful and hold depth, and can never truly be forgotten, that life actually matters, and that other people understand what happened to you more than you can ever fathom, that humans really are connected, like the transcendentalists thought, I was reminded of my all time favorite Beatles song. Your memory is likely already playing it back for you, but I will provide the lyrics anyway because they are stunningly beautiful:

There are places I remember, All my life, though some have changed. Some forever not for better; Some have gone and some remain. All these places have their moments, With lovers and friends I still can recall; Some are dead and some are living. In my life I've loved them all. But of all these friends and lovers, There is no one compares with you. And these memories lose their meaning; When I think of love as something new. Though I know I'll never lose affection, For people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about them. In my life I love you more. Though I know I'll never lose affection, For people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about them. In my life I love you more. In my life I love you more. -- the Beatles.

That, to me, is the most romantic song ever written. Not just romance as in love between two people, romance as in the movement. Romance as in the glorification of places and memories; the creation of symbolism to make mundane human lives beautiful and purposeful. I always tell people I am a true romantic. And I think people take this to mean that I enjoy human romance and swooning and wooing people over or whatever. I am not talking about presenting flowers to people or big "romantic gestures." People probably think I am bragging about being an outstanding lover. But, in fact, I do not even say this phrase in a particularly positive way; being a romantic is dangerous and emotionally draining. There is a reason that the movement died out. You should not draw meaning out of everything in life, because sometimes people have no intention to portray meaning where I suddenly am able to find seven hundred ways that they hate me from their one meaningless sentence. I do see beauty in sunsets and symbolism in life. I fall in love with everyone and everything too much, I live out Pedro Arrupe's words, which hang on my wall in two different places as my life motto:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything. -- Pedro Arrupe, SJ.

I think being a romantic is a way to "suck the marrow out of life," and I come by it quite honestly. I hear things and smell things and am transported to different places in different times with different people. I draw meaning from every encounter I have ever had. I am easily disappointed or upset by people, but I am also easily impressed and eager to fall in love (in every relationship, not just romantic ((yes, that kind of romance this time)) ones). I love easy, but do not easily feel love. 

It is important to reminisce and remember your roots. The people who made you, the experiences that created your brain, and the memories that you will hold forever. However, as my pal Dumbledore reminds us, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”