A whiff of lilacs and I’m back in the arbor atop Thorndon Park, awash in college-girl angst, looking for love and my place in the universe. One beat of Stevie Wonder’s wah-wah pedal in “Superstition”, and I’m back in the college bar where I first met my husband as a young stud.
Why do the 5 senses have the ability to transport us to a specific time and place and all the emotions that go with it? Google this phenomenon and neuroscientists will give you the physiological answer.
As a writer, I mention this connection because the five senses are the power tools in your writer’s toolbox. If you want to put your reader in the room with you as you create a scene, tell them not only what you see, but what you’re tasting, touching, smelling, and hearing. The more vicarious their experience, the more likely they’ll resonate with your narrator and her discoveries. And that’s what stories, fact or fiction offer isn’t it? A chance to learn about yourself through the lessons learned by others.
Here’s an emotional flash memoir to show you what I mean.
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Joe Dempsey, the bartender at the Orange, died the week before I graduated from Syracuse University. I’m pretty sure he was a senior, and would have graduated with me. Joe was the 6’3” fixture behind the downstairs bar, his beefy hands passing out drinks and receiving payment every night that I worked upstairs as a busgirl.
Every night that is, until a closing-time altercation with customers who weren’t ready for the party to be over. I heard there was a car chase through Thorndon Park, and somewhere on that lilac-scented hill, in the dewy hours of a May morning, Joe’s curly blonde head slammed against the inside of his tin can van as it hurtled off the curve. His heart stopped mid-beat.
I suppose you’d call Joe an acquaintance, not a friend. I didn’t go to his proper funeral, but I did go to the end-of-the year luncheon at the Orange for all staff.
My boyfriend, John, said, “I don’t want to go. Too sad. It’ll be like a wake.”
So, alone, I walked into the upstairs of the Orange and filled a submarine roll with cold meat from a platter set on a table in the middle of the dance floor. The juke box was mute. Jeff, the manager, was sitting on one side of a red vinyl booth. Harry, the old fellow who owned the place, was spread out on the other side of the table.
He narrowed his toady eyes and sucked on a Carlton. His smoke highlighted dust motes floating in the stale air. “Ya done good kid.”
Good? What was good? I’d mastered how to put ten bottles on my fingertips at once and release them into a chute that led directly to the basement.
“Thanks,” I managed, between bites of my humongous sandwich and slurps of free beer.
I stood in the center of the small dance floor, usually so crowded, vast in its emptiness, noticing things I’d never noticed before. The whole room stank of bathroom cleanser. The windows were made of glass brick. The linoleum was so worn it was hard to say for sure if it was supposed to be green. A space so thrilling in the dark, pathetic in the light of day.
Bret, the upstairs bartender, walked in with a girlfriend I didn’t know. Maybe John was right. I had nothing in common with the people in that room except drinking and Joe, and no one dared speak his name.
I made my farewells and grabbed a cup of free beer to go.
I headed back to M Street and walked up the steep hill to Thorndon Park to my favorite spot, the lilac bower, then in full bloom. As my lungs inflated with the intoxicating purple fragrance, I closed my eyes. Was I drawn to this idyllic garden or magnetized to the site where Joe’s soul was kidnapped? Underneath the canopy of blossoms, death seemed surreal, an unnatural intrusion.
I continued to the top of the egg-shaped drumlin and sat cross-legged on the cool grass. Glancing down at my smooth thighs glistening in the sunshine with fine golden hairs, my own death seemed an impossible inevitability, and yet the hulking grandson of a legendary prizefighter was no match for the silent, sulking force lurking just below the surface of existence. I surveyed the campus below where I’d prepared for a future which could, in an instant, be erased.
Death pointed a boney finger at my life and whispered, are you making a difference? What will you do between now and nothingness? Who will care when you’re gone? Are you on course? Who knew? I was a small boat without a rudder. Swamped by waves of emotion I couldn’t name. Taken to a depth I couldn’t fathom.
A week later I walked across the stage of the Carrier Dome to receive my diploma. Was it only seven days? In light of eternity, time blurs. The end of an era speeds up as it winds down. John watched with my parents as I marched by in a white robe with others whose last name began with the letter C. Joe’s ghost floated somewhere behind me in the D section. D for Dempsey, and death.
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My daughter in Texas recently told me jasmine smells like joy. My backyard is currently fragrant with lilac, for me, forever, the potent decoction of life focused by death.
Dear readers what memories are brought to your mind by a scent? A song? The feel of sand beneath your toes? Your grandmother’s cooking? The odor of a locker on the last day of school? There’s a story there. Your story. And our stories are one of the powerful ways God portrays our fallen nature and his saving grace. Make it come to life for your listeners with your 5 God-given senses.
“They triumphed over him (meaning the devil) by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.”
Revelation 12:11
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