Moments the Body Remembers

I get in my car and I am briefly cold. I am in winter, wearing a sweater, my coffee in one hand as I start the car is meant to wake me up as well as to warm my hands. There’s ice on the window and rain on the streets. Then it is gone. Just like that, poof, a moment that comes from inside and changes my surroundings for a flash. I have these moments often I am overcome with a sense of seasons and what they felt like. I could be walking down the street when suddenly I feel the early spring morning when finally there is more dew on the grass than frost and everything is crisp and your nose tingles and makes your eyes water from the winter chill that won’t let up so easily. Or n night I was driving and I saw lights reflecting on the water and I felt immediately like I was back on the bus in Scotland, our first ride on a double decker bus right when we got off the plane. The excitement and joy was barely containable.

If home is where the heart is it is also what the body remembers. The sense of places, of smells, and small moments where you come into contact with yourself and something almost infinite and moves you to contentment. These are the things you take with you and they are better than memorizing the best of poems. They are also the moments that make me see and remember that I am not at home. That is ok; I am out learning about the world. Learning about privilege and who I am and what I need to be doing with my life.

Later, when I have moved on from here, I am sure that I will be getting in my car one morning waiting for it to heat up, or maybe it will be as I pour water over the windshield to defrost it, that I will be overcome with the smell wet lava rock. I will feel a short tropical breeze with the hint of plumeria on its breath and I will be here in Hawaii again, warm and thankful.