When we moved to Nigeria, West Africa I was pleased to find there were lots of fruits growing all around our house. There were bananas, pineapples, papayas, mangoes and a few others. One was of particular interest. Just outside the kitchen window was a cherry tree or perhaps better described as a cherry bush. It was about fifteen feet tall (that's five meters in Nigerian). The branches were big enough that the kids could climb up them, which they did when the cherries got ripe. The cherries themselves were light green as they grew, then turned to yellow, then orange and if they were allowed to get fully ripe, a beautiful red color. The unusual thing about them is that they were fluted, i. e. they had ridges on them. Each cherry had eight to twelve ridges. I don't remember counting them. I'm relying on my memory here. Which brings me to my point.
The first time I bit into one of the cherries, I “remembered” the taste. I had tasted that exact taste before somewhere, but that seemed next to impossible as I had never been to Africa before (except for a quick trip a few months earlier but the cherries weren't ripe then). I couldn't remember ever having seen a fluted cherry but the memory of the taste was definitely stored in my mind. The mystery wasn't solved until about three years later when I was visiting family in Alabama and I was telling them about the cherries. My brother said, “Oh, Aunt so and so had some of those in her yard in West Hollywood, Florida when we lived there.” Here's the thing. I don't remember anything about living in West Hollywood. I only know I lived there because my birth certificate says I was born there and my family tells me we did. I do have a picture of me sitting on a pony but that's not a real memory.
My point is simply that even though I have no conscious memory of living there my mind had somehow stored a memory of a taste of something and when I tasted it again I remembered. I think that's fascinating.
Tastes, sights, smells all stored somewhere in the mind waiting for some trigger to release them. And so, a little over thirty years after I had a cherry in West Hollywood I had another one in Nigeria and remembered it.
I once wrote an article entitled “I Smell a Memory.” I wrote it when we lived in Argentina. Every time I smell bread baking I am reminded of Buenos Aires because the bread stores (panaderias) always grabbed my nose and tried to pull me in to buy something. I remember Mecha's panaderia where my wife bought our bread and all the good memories of sharing our lives with Mecha and her family.
We usually associate memories to things we see but I'm convinced that some of our strongest memories are not sights but smells and sounds and tastes. Not all those memories are good ones but the best ones remind us of home and family and friends. God is good. He made our brains in such a way that they can store things up only to surprise us with a deja vu moment years later and miles away. Wish I had a fluted cherry about now.
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