Summer of My Childhood – A Five Senses Profile

I was recently introduced to the concept of a Fives Senses Profile.  Happiness guru, Gretchen Rubin, describes this in her recent book – Life in Five Senses.  She taps into each of her five senses to describe a person, event, place, or whatever.  I was, of course, touched by the one that she wrote to describe her dog, Barnaby.

I immediately set to work thinking about subjects for writing a five senses profile of my own.  I thought I might follow Gretchen’s lead and write one about my little Sunny Bun, but I also thought about writing one about MOH or my mom.  It would also be fun to write a retrospective profile of my son as a preschooler. 

I may decide to do one – or several – of those in the future, but this week I decided to focus on summer vacations of my childhood.  Many, but certainly not all, of our family summer vacations were spent at my aunt’s cottage on Lake Louise (with my dad’s side of the family) or in Sault Ste Marie, MI (with my mom’s side of the family).  Timewise they all sort of blur together, me not really knowing which year we spent where, so I thought a five senses profile of the bulk of my summer vacations would be fun to create – or recreate as may be more appropriate. 

Seeing

• Highway billboards, advertising fabulous places that I wanted to explore – The Mystery Spot, Call of the Wild, Sea Shell City.
• As we neared the tip of the Michigan mitten, excitement would build in the car as we kept a lookout for the first glimpse of the Mackinaw Bridge towers reaching into the sky.
• My older sister and I had matching red tennis shoes the year we stayed on Houghton Lake.  I think it was the high point of the trip for me.
• The cool darkness of the basement at Aunt Marie’s house where my Uncle Ed would show us slides (or were they eight milimeters?) projected on the wall.
• Minnows would dart around my ankles as I waded in the water next to the dock at Aunt Phyllis’s cottage.

Hearing

• WJR was the morning radio programming as we ate breakfast in the early morning darkness before starting our trip.
• Singing in the car was one of my favorites, and a good thing, because there was a lot of it.  Mom and Dad would harmonize on You Are My Sunshine and Play a Simple Melody.
• Listening to Mom and her sister catch up on family news (and everything else) by the hour – laughing and just enjoying being with each other.
• The distinctive Yooper accent of my aunts, uncles, and cousins.  “Yous don’t drink pop with your dinner, eh?”
• Waves gently lapping against the shore in the evening.

Smelling

• The musty closed up smell of the cottage when we would first arrive.
• The wet and slightly fishy smell of a Michigan lake.
• The smoky smell of a campfire.  I never wanted to go to bed while the fire was still burning, but I never wanted to see it go out.
• The aroma of coffee wafting into my consciousness in the mornings before I’ve even opened my eyes.

Tasting

• Apple butter spread on my toast.  A delicacy that we never had at home.
• Toasted marshmallows, wonderfully yummy and messy.  I hated if they caught on fire and would feed those to my dad.
• Pepsi, another special treat we didn’t get at home, poured from a glass bottle.
• Pringles potato chips.  We had them for the first time in the Soo.  My brother and I ate the better half of a can.

Touching

• Hot sand on my bare feet.  I would run a couple steps, then bury my feet deep into the sand where is was cooler. Then I would run a few more steps and do it again until I could get to the water.
• Wearing shorts and a tank top, but having to pull on a sweatshirt when the cool evening air set in.
• The harsh sting of sunburn on my shoulders, back, and top of my legs.
• Finger combing the blond hair (yellow yarn) of a handmade doll given to me by Aunt Mary.
• Stripping birch bark curls.  I couldn’t leave it alone (which my mom told me to do) any more than I could stop myself from pulling a hangnail or peeling the skin from my sunburn.

I wonder how this profile might have been different had I written these ‘sense memories’ when I was still a kid. I imagine I would have clearer memories of some items, and maybe remembered others not quite so idyllicly. No matter. I’ll keep my memories as-is.