She closed her eyes as the first warm breeze of spring touched her face. She sat in her yard, sun on heating the earth around her and traveling up to her skin. The air filtered through her freshly washed hair, making the scent of her coconut shampoo apparent. As the aroma traveled to her nostrils, so too did it make its way to her brain. And that’s when she remembered.
Eyes shut tightly, she remembered it all. She remembered the girl running through the trees next to which she now sat, weaving her way in and out of each maple on a similar spring day many years ago.
She remembered the sun-soaked days splashing in the pool, with the same washed up coconut scent coating her skin as she saw the sun makes it journey across the sky — East to West, day to night — each day from her backyard.
She remembered the girl a little older, shooting hoops and hitting baseballs, then hunting for remnants of fairy dust at dusk in the pine trees.
She remembered the way she left the window open on those summer nights, fearing the creatures lurking in the yard but at once hoping that through the pitch black of the daytime’s slumber, maybe Peter Pan would find in her a Wendy awaiting her Neverland.
She remembered the girl, older still, inviting friends over to enjoy the wonderland of her yard.
She remembered the way her driveway came to see one beloved dog be driven off for the last time and months later, a new puppy learn to walk on a leash for the first time. The way its cracks have etched into them the history of the girl’s first outdoor run, her first date, her first time loading the car to move away from her childhood wonderland. The way it traced the path as her first car pulled onto its black top, and the way it set off again to bring her to her first job, and then another.
She remembered it all, and the breeze and the sunshine made her relive all the chapters of her life, each girl she once was, every sweet stepping stone moment leading her to her now. She remembered with the same contentedness she had always felt under that same sun, in that same yard, at that same house. She drifted as she basked in the warmth of both the sun and her memories.
“What are you thinking about?”
The question startled her out of the scrapbook her mind constructed from her surroundings.
“Oh, nothing,” she said, as a secret smile came across her lips.
“Nothing at all.”
What Matters Today 