Reminiscence - by Susan Giles

https://Voice.club - It was the musty smell that drew her in. The smell was reminiscent of homemade quilts placed lovingly over her on cold nights. Her mind embraced an odor of playing in the decaying barn, turning plowshares into swords and ladders into ship masts where pirates fought, and reputations were born, while rain rapped rhythm on the roof and the spray softly soothed her face.

It was being caught under the front porch listening to the females of her family disclose daily gossip and her uncle play “I’ll Fly Away” on guitar, while soprano voices lifted into flight on the ascending song, and the enveloping odor of ivy-encrusted tree trunk and shed where she and her cousin shared tears, laughter, and secrets of their youth.

It was a box from the attic which, opened, revealed flowers picked by a young man’s hand, presented with a kiss, then pressed between pages of letters which told of love promised, pursued, and then purloined by Washington bureaucrats with an unclear need for control.

It was her face hidden within folds of her mother’s skirt when the message came of death in Southeast Asia. It was flowers left to decay around the grave.

It was joy, and comfort, and sadness, and love.

It was past, present, and potential.

It was all of life in one breath.

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What an incredible story, Susan. I am touched by this protagonist who is remembering random moments of her life, triggered by smells. I love “turning plowshares into swords” and being caught under the front porch hearing the daily gossip. The quilts, the uncle playing “I’ll Fly Away”, the shed - this is on some level a story of growing up in the American South.

The letters and the news from Southeast Asia were the turning point in the story for me - even after all these years, I felt a sob in my throat, just reading it. I never got that kind of news, just a sudden cessation of letters. I always wondered what had happened to the young boy who wrote to me faithfully for three years - the last letter was from Guam, where he was stationed as a helicopter gunner flying to VietNam. Like so many of the other boys who fought in that war, he was 19.

Did you make the quilt in the picture? It is a vintage quilt, for sure!

Happiness and sadness are intricately woven around memories triggered by a variety of odours. The final lines really pull the story together. Powerful writing Susan.