Thursday, November 10, 2005

Wood smoke

I was taking some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies out of the oven today, when I got a whiff of something else entirely that transported me back to being about 9 years old and in back of my cabin at summer camp, hanging my bathing suit on the clothesline to dry.

This has nothing to do with the cookies or camp. My supervisor was here for a couple of days this week; we went for a drive after we were done work last night so she could see the Sara Gamp. She wasn't quite up to climbing over the beach rocks to examine it closely, but we saw it from the road. Seeing as how it is so close to my parent's house, I asked if she wanted to swing by there and see where I grew up. So we stopped in, and my mom and dad were wonderful and friendly and genuinely pleasant, not with any undertones of "why did you bring someone from the city to our house to see the mess without any warning?". It smells wonderful like wood smoke and friendly dog at their house. And then there was the awkwardness when my supervisor is telling them how well I'm doing, and they beam because it was them, after all, who brought me up, and I'm just sitting there feeling awkward and feeling as though I'm supposed to be smiling. My hair still smelled like their house when I went to bed.