Breath Deep

This evening I took a moment to inhale...

I was standing on my deck and I just stopped to look around for a moment and then I took a really deep breath, and do you know what I smelled....I smelled "Iowa". Now before you think pigs, cows and all things stinky, it wasn't that....it was the Iowa of my childhood memories. It was the smell of my grandparents farm that had no animals. The smell of hay and alfalfa and rich black soil. A sweet scent hanging rich in the humid air. As I sat there breathing in the aroma that transported me back to the carefree days of chasing kitties and running in corn fields, of playing kick the can over the barn and spitting watermelon pits into the grass, I wondered -- does it always smell like this here? Do I not even know that these scents are surrounding me because I no longer take time to just sit and breath.

Every summer as a child, my family made the 10 hour drive from Michigan to central Iowa to visit my grandparent's farm for a whole week. It was the best week of summer -- there was something magical about it. The quiet, the stars, the air, the love. The traditions of coffee time and tea time -- just like clock work. (And of course, nap time during "As the World Turns") The fresh raspberries or strawberries that had just been picked covered with cream and eaten in cut glass bowls. The games of pinochle around the big kitchen table. And the laughter shared (at some one's expense) as my grandpa pulled off yet another practical joke.

As I took a moment to breath in tonight, poignant memories filled my mind and I missed those days and the precious people who were the center of them.