Do you ever get a glimpse of something that reminds you, or catch a scent or a sound that makes you feel like you're seven years old again? What reminds you of home, your childhood, or the past?

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Answers

This is going to sound cheesy, but the sunset over the ocean everyday immediately takes me back to my childhood. When I was a kid my nightly ritual was to stand in front of our kitchen window at exactly 5:14 pm and watch the sun set over the ocean. I was 60 miles inland, but at a high enough elevation that on clear days I could see the horizon shimmering with the sea. On weekends we would head to Huntington, Laguna, Balboa or any number of local beaches. The sunset was always the signal to come out of the water and catch the last few rays on a fluffy beach towel.

Now I live four blocks from the ocean, and at 5:14 pm I'm always on the shore road, heading home. So I still get to see the sun set. :)

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

As a military kid, I find the sound of jet engines roaring overhead to be soothing.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Sweet corn. Especially good, juicy sweet corn in August. I guess it's stereotypical for an Illinois girl, but one bite takes me back to endless summers as a child. Here in Colorado, truly luscious sweet corn is a rarity.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Early evening, cool and damp, stars just starting to appear, sound of a freeway in the distance, trees by moonlight, reminds me of Thanksgiving and Christmas on my grampa's farm in Merced.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Hemlock.

I grew up on a very wooded farm in New Hampshire with a lot of hemlock trees. The word "hemlock" is home. It's my father griping about beavers chewing on maple trees; it's the stuff we collected for my mother to make wreathes; it's the sleaziest of pine trees gathered like weeds near any indentation in the woods that holds water; it's the best stuff to hide in when you're in the woods; it surrounds my favorite ice skating pond when the dachsund who had barked ferociously at something came back with a snout full of porcupine quills.

I saw actual hemlock plants out here in the Marin Headlands and yet, I felt surrounded by home.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Weeping willows, kettle stones, and the sound of crickets. Instant home.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Winter time. The Woods. Snow.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Christmas. The smell of apple pie/chocolate chip cookies baking. The sounds of any one of these: Ian & Sylvia, The Beatles' early stuff, Simon & Garfunkle, Beethoven's 9th.

Cups of hot tea and quilts.

Lots of things bring back the past to me. I'm a very nostalgic person and I am often flung back into memory by random occurrences -- in fact this happens to me almost daily.

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

Summer sunsets in Maine last a long, long time, the weather is very changeable, and the terrain is hilly. Often, driving west down a hill, you will have dense clouds overhead, the dark road falling away below and the setting sun peeking through a band of clear sky on the horizon. It gives you the feeling of driving upwards, out of darkness and into light, even though you're actually descending.

Whenever I am under an overcast sky and see the sun setting in a band of clear western sky I think of that.

-- Anonymous, December 23, 1999

my neighbor down the hall at school is from baltimore, too, and he likes to lie in the hallway and bounce his lacrosse ball off the wall outside his room. it drives most of my floormates nuts, but when he's home i leave my door open so i can hear the "thump ... thump ... thump ... thump" against the cheap walls. it makes me think of high school, where the lacrosse players couldn't go a week without breaking a window inside during the winter.

-- Anonymous, December 23, 1999

A Christmas tree that's fifteen feet tall indoors, makes me think of my grandmother's house, where all the family gathered for Christmas. She had those tall ceilings that Edwardian houses had.--Al of Nova Notes.

-- Anonymous, December 23, 1999

For me, it's a sound. Loons. Their plaintive/creepy cries always bring me back to Northern Maine, where I spent many a summer's night sitting on the screened-in porch, watching the reflection of the setting sun in the smooth-as-glass lake, and the fireflies weaving in and out of the tall grass. When it was fully dark, Mom would come out and join us on the porch swing and read to us. That old, rusty swing had a sound all its own, too, kind of a .

You don't hear loons in downtown Philadelphia (well, you do, but not the bird kind), but I have a tape of loon calls. Makes me homesick every single time.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 1999