Memories are triggered by small things almost as powerfully as the big events in one’s life. The smell of Old Spice will immediately bring my father in to my room almost as a visible presence just as the smell of orange zest or earl grey tea trigger the memories of my grandmothers. Other triggers are snail mail personal letters (the grandmothers again), and roast beef dinners or runzas (my mother). As I age these small reminders of people in my younger life seem to come more often to set my mind roaming to the small daily sharing’s with these people in the past and also to do once again some of the things I once did with them.

Dad was a big man well over six feet with the broad chest and small waist of an athlete. His temper was just as big as his frame but it was a burst of energy that burned out as soon as it was evident. A traveling salesman he knew everybody and they knew him but he was not a Willy Loman. He loved life and lived it well, and he shared that life with me. Saturdays, we often went to a movie just he and I. I suppose it was this way as Mom did not go often as she always had something to do in the house but those times in the cool dark theater sharing a John Wayne or Randolph Scott movie are precious memories to me.

Mom was small barely five feet but she was the power in our house. She ran it and as he was gone on the road that meant she saw to all the things a man might do as well as the “ womanly duties.” Her cooking and racy sense of humor lit up our lives and as an only child I receive the full impact of both of these talents. She was independent and determined. I find I am more like her than I every thought I would be.

Orange zest and spicy raisin filling make Granma James come to mind. In her Ohio kitchen a blue roaster stood near the dining room door. I cannot recall it being empty nor were her knitting needles ever still until the last years of her life. I can see her now sitting near the window in her kitchen knitting or filing her nails as she watched the cardinals dance in the pines across the drive. Earl grey tea will bring a smile to my face as I picture Grandma Janie (Mom’s mother) asking me to join her and them making me eat a rubbery egg custard. Shorter than her daughter she had a steel will and I recall she hid the toys she considered obnoxious under her bed. She also had determination in spades. After she could not walk and had to go to a rest home due to spinal collapse, she told my mother and I she would walk again. The doctors said no but in less than six months she was walking. To quote her,” It was the power of prayer.” Even more important to me were the weekly letters each wrote to me as I grew up far from their Pennsylvania and Ohio homes.

So perhaps this why I bake raisin filled cookies, drink earl grey, still write snail mail to those I care about, think Sunday requires a roast beef dinner to be Sunday and why I just bought DVDs’ of Hondo and Mcclintock.