Using my 5 senses

Today I am up very early..way too early especially because Keith is still in bed and I am up but it is also a holiday so should be back in there. But my body is telling me I can't lay on my sides or back anymore and to get up up UP before it starts screaming so here I am. It is spring over here so my allergies are back in full swing. I can not wait till the next life when our bodies will be perfected.. I live for that day!!!

But as I sit here with my face covered with a heat mask it reminded me of things I miss smelling. Which of course made me think of things I miss hearing and then seeing then tasting.. hey what can I say... My brain works like my mothers and my daughters.. we can go from no thoughts in our head to a marathon of thoughts in 2 seconds flat.

So here are some of the things that I miss using my 5 senses:

The smell of Johnson's Paste Floor wax. I wonder if they even make them anymore. I loved that smell. I would wash then wax my floors just before the kids would come home from school and they would be so excited when they walked in the door, as they would smell the wax and know they got to put on Dad's big socks and slide all over the floors while they got polished. I miss hearing that sound of laughter.

I miss the sound of sheets hanging on a clothesline where there was a little breeze and you would hear them snapping. I miss the scent of clothes coming in from outside. I miss climbing into bed that first night with clean sheets off the line and just smelling the sheets.

I miss our house on Hyland Road with all the fruit trees there. I could just go outside and grab an apple or a pear and bite into it tasting that crispness and taste of them. I miss getting a basket of fruit from the trees and bringing them in the house to make a pie with them, or can them for the winter months. I miss hearing my children saying "there's nothing to see" and my telling them to go outside and find something to eat.

I miss Sunday dinners with the Hunters and the Bells. I miss my excitement knowing they were coming over every week and planning what I was going to serve trying to make something new each time and just being together.

I miss Northgate Bakery in Sask. We had a "deal" with the bakery who's claim to fame was that they only sold baked fresh that day items. We had gotten the scoop from our friends that you could go to the back of the bakery at 5pm and you could get everything left over for 40 dollars. The deal was 40 dollars flat. At times you got 2 grocery bags full other times we could not stuff the back of our vehicles there was so much stuff. But it was always 40 dollars. You got every kind of breads, rolls, muffins, danishes etc etc. The children would love Thursday nights as that was when it was available. That seems so long ago

I miss living close enough to see my family whenever I wanted to. Now I am down to once a year as I save my money hard to be able to make the trip back to see everyone. Even after 20 years I still get so homesick for my mom and my brothers and their families.

I miss Mondays at my mom's growing up. We knew that Mondays were laundry days but it also was bread baking day which meant for lunch we were getting "Petit Pains". The bread dough would always be hitting the first rise and as mom would knead the dough she would take pieces of dough roll them into a log then fry them in hot oil for a couple of minutes. We always raced home that day cause we knew what was coming. We could always smell laundry soap in our yards as the laundry was always on the line and we could smell the bread dough cooking. We would open these petit pains up and put butter and something in them. It could he jam or honey or peanut butter or real maple syrup in Quebec but eat them we did.

I miss getting that syrup from Quebec. Dad's family every year would ship us some maple syrup when they were tapping their trees and the day it came to the house we knew what we would get to eat. Dad would heat some of it up and then poach eggs in it. Ohhhh man you have never tasted TASTE till you tasted that. It was sooooo goood.

I miss the sounds of branding season on the farm. The sounds of the calves being branded, the sounds of my dad, uncles and grandfather talking and "yelling" to us kids to get certain calves or to get out of the way. I miss the sounds of my mom, aunts, and grandmother as they would talk while setting up the long tables that would hold massive amounts of food soon. I miss the smell of the hay up in the hayloft as we jumped from the loft down into the stacks on the ground, then waiting for the tell tale voice of our mothers yelling at us to not make a mess and to stay away from the bulls in their pens which always seemed to come just as we would be poking the bulls.

I miss the taste of my mom's head cheese. That would be part of our Christmas morning breakfast. She would slice them and I would put it in toast and then mustard and just keep eating till I was stuffed. One year I didn't eat any cause that was the year I mistakenly got up in the middle of the night for some reason and went to get my mom who was just taking a pig's actual head out of the oven. She had to explain to me why it was in there. That year I could not eat it as I knew where it came from but the next year I was so over it and dived into it.

I miss the sight of our community garden on the farm. All of the uncles and aunts, our parents and grandparents would have this huge garden area (well at least to me it was huge) and in the spring everyone would be there planting. Every summer we would always be there weeding and every fall we would all be there harvesting the crops. Our house would be crammed with dozens of cobs of corn or baskets and baskets of peas we had to shell into bowls and of course into our mouths, mounds of green beans to cut into pieces. Every body worked together and always talking while we worked alongside our grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings of course.

Well I think that is enough remembering for one early morning. Some days I wish I was back there doing all those things again. But I guess we all have to grow up some day and become responsible adults and make new memories for our children and grandchildren. But still, those sure were the good old days.