02/15/2024
Long post… but worth it 🥰
Do you ever smell something that brings back a memory? Today hit me like a wave that shifted me back in time so quickly I felt dizzy.
I was in Kroger doing self check out (because that what we do these days) and this rush came over me as I smelled something familiar. I tried to ignore it at first but it was too strong to ignore. There was an older gentleman trying to use the self check out next to me. He had old clothes on that appeared to need washed. He was scruffy on his face and had deep lines and wrinkles that showed the hard times he had faced in his life. His hair was disheveled and unkept, with messy pieces sticking out from under an old ball cap that had seen better days. To be honest, he smelled like he had been living in a tavern. (For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a bar). He smelled of musty alcohol and smoke. Not the alcohol smell that someone gets when they just had a glass of wine or a beer. But that smell that seeps from the pores of people who drink very regularly. You know the smell right?
I was not alarmed or put off by him. I didn’t pass judgement on him. I simply flashed back to my youth. You see, my mom ran an old tavern, or bar, for several years while I was growing up. It was a tall, 2 story red brick building that seemed so old I could not have guessed its age back then. The floors were concrete and there were wooden booths and old leather bar stools inside. There was a jukebox that we could hear from our apartment upstairs and it would sometimes just start playing even when the bar was closed and no one was there. In the back, there were small bathrooms and then some rooms where the alcohol and supplies were stored. They were old concrete rooms that were damp and musty. Perfect for storing wine and beer.
The bar was always kept clean. My mom would not have had it any other way. But it was an old place and no matter how much you cleaned it, it always has that smell. The same smell I smelled on this old man today.
The Wooden Keg Tavern has since been demolished and there is no sign of that old building anymore. Some would say that it wasn’t a place to raise children and turned their noses up to us. I say it doesn’t matter where the place is or what it looks like. It’s the memories you make there and the love that you spread there.
Are there bad memories there? Absolutely! But that’s not what I think of when I reminisce about it. I think of all the friendly faces that would sit at the bar and tell stories. I think of all the people who would do anything for each other because they had no one else. I think of my grandpa in there telling it how it was. I think of holidays where people had nowhere else to go but the tavern. I think of going in to help mom clean and dancing to the jukebox and pretending to be a worker on the cash register and in the kitchen. I think of playing on the back “roof” in the summer. I think of a lot of things.
I think my mom carries a lot of guilt and regret for the way things went for us when we were kids. I wish she didn’t. We really did go through some terrible things but it made us who we are. And I don’t even think of those things! I think of all the good things and I think how lucky I was to experience stuff that other kids didn’t. It’s ok to be different. It’s ok to not “fit in”. It’s ok to struggle.
Your kids will love you whether you live in a mansion on a hill or in a tiny apartment above an old tavern.
The moral of this story is to love where you are. You can have goals and want to make changes and that’s great! But don’t forget to love where you are right now too. Don’t forget to make memories that matter now too. We are never promised tomorrow so don’t get so caught up on your future plans that you forget that you are blessed today. One day, you might smell or see something that takes you back to memories of simpler times. And these will be the good old days. Today will be the good old days.
Memories Matter
Heather
