Smelling the Sun

It’s a beautiful, summery Saturday afternoon here at the lake. As Mama and Papa Mallard busily preen themselves on the pier, humidity hangs like a thick, earthborn blanket of fog.  Whining boats haul squealing tubers around the lake.  The ice cream truck tinkles its tunes on the road to lure patrons to buy overpriced, FUN-tastic frozen treats.

I spent the last hour heaving a hoe around, sweating like crazy, weeding my new, low-budget landscape project.  Finally I stopped to take a break in the air conditioning, and so am currently reclining on the couch with my feet up on the old chest we use as a coffee table and a tall glass of icy mint sun-tea next to my right hand.

But all of the above is just a lengthy introduction.  I’m here at the blog in this moment of R&R to bear witness to an unexpected diversion that seems more than incidental.  Let me tell you…

I come inside from weeding, and for about five seconds I hug my worker-bee-hubby – ummmmmm-mum! – who has also been puttering outside with lawn projects. The shoulder of his cotton t-shirt smells like sunshine – the odor literally engulfs me – and I’m thrown back in time.  It’s the old hang-the-laundry-on-the-clothesline kind of sunshine–smell I grew up with as a kid at the lake. 

Everything rewinds in that moment until I literally feel like a sweaty little child in my dirty flip-flops and short-shorts.  I close my eyes and imagine my mother driving us into town with two wicker baskets piled high with crumpled dirty laundry.

Then I’m walking into the steamy laundromat and punching a quarter per load in the machines - hauling our heavy baskets full of wet things back out to the car - driving home with the windows down - hanging the clean laundry outside on the clothesline with wooden pins - and finally burying my face in the baskets full of sunshine-scented clothes. Our bed sheets, towels, and clothes always smelled like the sun in those days. Divine!

It’s comforting somehow when things like this happen - when some seemingly small event links the current moment to some other time and place so they intersect in a mystical but very real way.

At the risk of sounding philosophical, I can’t help but wonder if overlapping experiences (ones that seem to touch some inner core) are actually a foretaste of heavenly reality?  If so, they are more than just simple déjà vu – they suggest that earthly time and space are part of a bigger dimension where all of life finally connects and fits together: Paradise.