Day 115: Pure White

Wow, these give yesterday's 'Blue Nike' a run for their money in the boring department. YAWN.

Ever since I was a baby I remember smelling things. Anything and everything. I love scents. Scents evoke the absolute strongest memories for me, usually. I adore that when you smell something it can take you back to a totally different place and time and it's like you never left. My Mom has told me before that when I was a baby and she would pick me up, she could hear me sniffing her hair. The grossest thing I did as a toddler was sniff the couch after people stood up. Like a dog. How embarrassing. Having an acute sense of smell at that age, though, is probably what has kept my sense of smell so intense.

Tonight, however, it was my sense of taste that took me back to a place and time that I wasn't expecting.

As you can read in the last few previous blogs, I am incredibly stressed with school at the moment. I have countless assignments, quizzes, final projects, papers and presentations due in the next 2 1/2 weeks and I am totally freaking out. Today I met with two separate groups to work on projects and both meetings left me frustrated. Not so much with the people in the groups, but the projects themselves. When I came home this evening at around 7pm, after being at school all day, I wasn't in the best mood. Not angry, just a little bit grumpy and feeling the stress all over again in realizing everything that is on my plate. My Dad had made dinner and saved me some leftovers, so I ate some dinner. My Dad's birthday was on Sunday and my Stepmom had made this absolutely delicious layered chocolate cake with chocolate shavings and raspberries on top. The entire cake was made with fair trade chocolate. Seriously impressive! I had one of the leftover cake pieces for dessert after dinner. I saved the top piece of cake with the chocolate shavings and the raspberry for last. I have loved raspberries for a long time. In fact, I think I would say they are my favourite fruit.

When I bit into that raspberry though, it was like I was 13 years old and on my Nana and Papa's farm in Quebec. It was hot out. It was summer vacation and I was staying out there for the entire month of July. I had spent the morning down in the Tannery. This was the pool of water at the bottom of the creek. You couldn't see the bottom. Kids would jump in and swim. Considering my blog about being afraid of water, I didn't swim. I would walk up and down the creek trying to make it the whole way by stepping on rocks and not stepping into the water. It was a game; it was a challenge. There were leeches in the water. I had never encountered leeches before. They are, possibly, the reason I tried my rock game. I knew that if a leech got onto me that I was supposed to use salt to get it off. I didn't have salt, it was all the way back at Nana's house. After playing for hours near the water and wandering around the farm in the hot, sticky, mid-July, Quebec weather I decided to go up to my Aunt Audrey's house to say hello. She lived in a big old farm house on the property that was shared by her and my Grandparents. As I was headed up to her place, I passed a raspberry bush. Never in my life had I seen raspberries that looked so big, red, and juicy. I knew, in that moment, that I had to taste these. I started with one. I took my sweet time picking the one that looked the best before finally popping it into my mouth. It was a gusher that flooded my mouth with flavour the second I bit into it.

So delicious.

I can't eat raspberries without thinking about that day and, to be honest, I'm glad for it.

Love you for always, Nana.
xo