Untouchable Textures

Yesterday as I was driving home from work, I saw what would seem to some, an absurd connection to my past... A child of about 4 in a stroller, being pushed by her dad, walking along in the rain.  Now, from the best of my memory, this never actually happened to me, just my dad and I, walking along in the rain... but that's not the memory that the sight triggered.  It was a memory of untouchable textures.  Of the feeling of getting home, just a little bit damp... of all the lights in the house being off and the air having a bit of a chill... As tho the house was asleep... resting up for the evening ahead... as the lights turn on, the air warms and my memory goes to my heart feeling full... of love, of comfort and of warmth... As sure as I was sitting in my car I was having this amazing flashback to an untouchable texture of warmth.

Textures are a huge thing for me... Especially soft... soft to me is warm, cozy, loving, inviting... comfort. Soft soothes my soul.  It could be one explanation for the many MANY blankets and throws that live year round in my home.  For my incurable fascination with toss cushions, and duvets.. coffee mugs (while certainly not soft, they are the epitome of warm)... I've stopped purchasing 'soft' every time I'm feeling down, because it becomes a second job rotating the blankets and coffee mugs, but there I'm drawn.

The other thing that will stop me in my tracks is scent.  I'm immediately triggered to warm and happy, cozy and loved with certain smells... Sometimes it's just a whiff on the wind and as I stand, stock still trying to float away into my memory, I'm afraid I'll inhale all the air in the world, trying to get every drop of that smell embedded into my mind and body.  I remember the cabin of my childhood, the absolute bliss of being ensconced in my dad's cabin... my mom cooking dinner in our Fraser Lake house after school (a time, which incidentally, I have very very few memories... even tho I lived the first 12 years of my life there... more on that some other time).  And the funny thing is that sometimes textures... sights sounds and smells take me somewhere I've never been... to a memory that lives only in my imagination... I like to think that these fictitious memories are of places my mind and soul goes to escape... in sleep... in times of trouble and need... So vivid are these moments, that I'm sure I must be dreaming... And then I go about my life with the attempt to recreate those things that make me feel at home.. a gingerbread candle in my kitchen... soft lighting in the den... piles of soft blankets and going to bed with my slippers on... all things that feed my soul a nourishment that it doesn't get from anywhere else but Untouchable Textures.