Sensing the Past

In my field of psychotherapy, I often work with clients to examine their past in order to give context to their present.  Clearly, many of our behaviors as adults have their genesis in our childhoods.  We seem to place great effort as adults on living in the past, dealing with the past, escaping the past, wanting the past, or attempting to recreate the past.  I do not wish to delve into the dysfunction of my past or any other’s past in this posting, but rather, to look at some of my behaviors in the context of recreating sensory experiences of my past.  By sensory I mean what I have experienced with senses--my taste, my ears, my smell, my eyes and my touch--and how those senses offer me comfort in the present. 

My wife can tell you about some of my “comfort” foods from my childhood: pot roast, meat loaf, coconut cream pie, Jello Fluff (a dessert made on graham cracker crust topped with whipped gelatin), deserts in general, and peas.  I will sometimes order something in a restaurant that sounds similar to what I ate in my childhood with the hope that it will indeed by similar.  It rarely compares.  But give me some homemade pot roast on a Sunday afternoon….  (A confession: my wife’s pot roast while similar is better than my mom’s!)  Yummm.

Musically, we baby boomers love to listen to music from earlier days. For me, my longing for earlier music goes not only to rock music, what I would listen to on the AM radio, but to the music played in my home either before or concurrent with the likes of the Beatles and the Beach Boys.  For example, I have purchased the music or possess recordings in some form of old singing groups like The Mills Brothers and The Ink Spots.  It is likewise comforting to listen Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and to the western sound of Jimmy Dean.  I would also put in this aural category the monologues of comedian Bill Cosby  that I listened to growing up and which have likewise become favorites of my children.  When I listen to him now, it feels like I’m getting reacquainted with an old friend.  And just this week I purchased a CD recording of an obscure flautist, Thijs Van Leer, whose music I had on cassette in the 80s but which had gotten lost.  Ahhhh yeah.

               

As Ann and I gradually make interior and exterior improvements in our Tujunga home, I have expressed a desire to place some jasmine bushes in the back yard underneath our bedroom windows so that the comforting, strong smell of that flower can help me relax at the end of the day.   Whenever I smell cedar these days, I go right back to my room in my childhood days when I was surrounded by a cedar chest, a cedar armoire, and a cedar drawer configuration that had a 50s era round mirror on top.  When Ann cooks that Sunday pot roast and that wonderful odor fills the house, I feel a pleasant contentment that in that moment, all is right with the world.  Sniffffff.

More than once I have tortured my kids by dragging them in my car to see the empty lot in Salt Lake City where the house was to which I came home from the hospital after my traumatic birth, the house that I grew up in and the alley behind that house where I used to play, the streets and homes of my old neighborhood, the church building where I attended Sunday services, and my alma mater, West High School.  (Both my elementary and junior high schools no longer exist)

More than once I have tortured my kids by dragging them in my car to see the empty lot in Salt Lake City where the house was to which I came home from the hospital after my traumatic birth, the house that I grew up in and the alley behind that house where I used to play, the streets and homes of my old neighborhood, the church building where I attended Sunday services, and my alma mater, West High School.  (Both my elementary and junior high schools no longer exist) I have taken them by the Salt Lake Tabernacle where my high school graduation took place, by Ensign Peak where I used to hike and have fun adventures, and to the family cabin in Emigration Canyon where I played and had adventures, and where the kids had the “privilege” of living for a few winter months while a home was being built.  Some of these sites have often been the visual location of dreams, perhaps a deep longing in my heart for gentler, simpler times.  Yesssss.

Not much exists in 2011 from my childhood that I can touch.  Mom has long since passed away.  Friends have scattered to the four winds. The furniture is gone as is the clothing.  Vehicles have probably been recycled or are in some landfill.  All that is left to touch from those simpler days—is me.  And while the body is bigger and getting a little wrinkled now, my Bobby spirit, my inner child, still inhabits it, and occasionally adult Bob likes to feel in his senses what young Bobby used to feel so many years ago.  A transition to the past?