Pistachio Shells

There are some things in life that can warm my heart faster than anything else. Some are random. Some things go without need of any explanation.

Here's some that come immediately to mind...

The smell of a "Pumpkin Pie" Yankee Candle. I buy one every year. I withhold the urge to purchase one year-round for the plain and simple fact that it makes it special to only burn one during the Fall. You had better believe it though ,that as soon as the first of September rolls around I will, quite giddily (is that a word? if not, then it is a sincere emotion) rush to the local candle selling store and pick one up. I love how it permeates the entire house with its sweet smell. How, in the evenings, it cast a comforting glow from its seat in the kitchen window. It begs for a cup of coffee, a good book and a soft blanket. I feel a bit warm and cozy on the inside just thinking about it.

A note in the mail. You know...a letter with a postage stamp with your name on it? Not a bill, or a credit card offer, or a LL BEAN catalogue. No, a letter. Written in ink. From someone who loves you. I especially like the ones that come just because. It isn't Christmas, it isn't my birthday. Just...because. I am not at all saying that having communication literally in the palms of my hands is not lovely. But a LETTER. A card for no reason. It warms me.

A rainy day. I have a friend who is a sunshine lover. The sun shine makes her step and her mood lighter. I don't mind the sunshine. I like it a lot, actually. But, I LOVE me a good rainy day. Even better? A Sunday afternoon rainy day. I creates in me the need to slow down; to take a deep breath, to read "Pride and Prejudice". I turn on Norah Jones on rainy days and listen to bluesy jazzy music really softly. When traveling on a rainy day I will follow the path of the raindrops on the window with my finger tracing its lines and getting caught in its trance. I love rainy days.

I also love a house full of people. Monday nights around here are soon to be my favorites. A house full of fun and randomness and people cooking and football on and entertaining conversation and the smell of a fresh pot of coffee. Last week I had a heart full and a house packed with little people that I adore. My lifelong friend came up with her 5 little ones under the age of 5 and I had my three nephews, five and under, and oh...ya.. MY girls. There were bodies everywhere in our little home. Laughter and peanut butter sandwiches and boogers and poopie diapers. I loved every minute of it.

The most disillusioning moments come after everyone is gone and I am left with empty coffee cups, dirty dishes in the sink and fingerprints on the walls.

But, it was the fingerprints on the walls that got me. Oh, it warmed me. It got me all reflective and stuff.

Truth be told, having my best friend here created as she and I discussed, and "IMPRINT" on my life. A memory.

What immediately flew to my heart was pistachio shells. (This is the random "thing" I was speaking of)

We have moved around quite a little bit in our (going on) 13 years of marriage. Okay...we have moved 11 times in 13 years of marriage. For nearly every one of those moves has been my life's truest friend. My incredible mother. This kind woman not only gave birth to me, took care of me when I had chicken pox, trained me, mentored me, weathered life's ups and downs and spent many a sleepless night on her knees for me, but, she has also helped me in my many, many, moves. She has recreated the idea of moving from "yucky" in the icky sense to "Yucky" in the sense that we laugh till we cry, quite literally. She makes moving fun. (She is not for hire.)

Truth be told, moving me has never been her favorite task and I am sure had she known that this would be part of the job description for being my mother, she would have requested quite early on in my life to make a switch with someone else's less "high-maintenance" little girl.

She is a trooper. She is the best.

Okay, but we are talking about warm memories and pistachio shells...

My mother loves them. Pistachios. She won't settle for the pistachio's that are already shelled for you. No sir, not this lady. That is part of the fun. Peeling them.

The warm memory comes in here that for weeks and weeks after she had left our home after adding her touches here and there to decorating and putting things lovingly away in my cupboards, I would find pistachio shells in the most random places. Finding them would bring about a surge of warmth to my heart and an inevitable choke to my throat as I held back a tear. It was an IMPRINT on my life. She left a memory for me to enjoy. Over and over again. I recently just moved our couch and there was one lone pistachio shell begging me to remember...and I did.

The dictionary says that memory is " the cognitive process whereby past experience is remembered or the power of retaining and recalling past experience."

Sounds quite technical when you put it like that. See, to ME, memories have a life. They breath. They are remarkable gifts to us because time is so limited by its swiftness and "temporalness" (again, not a word).

All it takes to encounter these precious ties to the past? Pistachio shells, pumpkin pie candles, old love notes, pictures from an old album, a song on the radio, fingerprints on the wall, empty coffee cups, the lingering smell of my husbands cologne on my cheek and sea shells in your swim trunks.

Memories
(June Masters Bacher)
My arms reach out through time and space

And hold each memory in place:A creaking swing, a whispered word,

A promise only night winds heard...
A little footstep on the stair,

A small fragmented baby prayer.

My arms reach out through time and space

And do not find an empty place.