Mr. and Mrs. Taste E. Buds

The Buds, yeah,I know um. You do, too. We live with them, those sweet and sour trips on the tongue. Masterpiece’s in the mouth. They are sometimes ever so sour, sour. Salty, ooh, yes that, too, and spicy. But they can be bitter. I hate it when they get like that; drives me nuts. We foodies can spin them right around, though, with crunchy sweet apples and salty pretzels. Or Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, which snaps open the ears and floods the buds with peanut-y plunge. Happy are they with combinations: sweet, salty, crunchy, munchy. “Hallelujah, brother,” they shout. “Get it, sister!”

Mine like stepping off a sidewalk occasionally into an exotic forest of knee deep pink roses, some plucked and transformed into fragrant jelly. Now that bullets the Buds back in a time machine and they tumble out, blinking into a cozy kitchen, a mom in a white apron, her soft brown hands making that wild rose jelly. And homemade wheat bread, too, slathered with salty white butter and eaten freshly popped from the oven, mouths exploding, igniting and delighting.



When Mr. and Ms. Taste E. Buds get bored they really yawn for herbs and spices like basil, dill, cumin, cilantro, sage, saffron, bay leaf, garlic, vanilla, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, rosemary. Did someone say Rosemary? Now she’s an edgy girl. I pair her up with a pork loin from time to time and she forces it to tango.

Think velvety sauces stung with white pepper. And glistening milk gravy flavored with sausage then poured over hot biscuits and fried potatoes. Have you ever had chocolate gravy? Well, I never! But the Bud’s have, courtesy of long lost Arkansas cousins.

But now we’re screaming the Buds language. And they really are easy to delight. Variety, baby, give them variety and they’ll dance a jig for you, or belt out that Marshall Tucker classic tune: "Can’t you see, can’t you see, what that woman, she’s been doin’ to me." Yeah, that one.

I’ll tell you what, though. If we deprive them of sweets for too long, we’d best throw them a key lime pie made from scratch to appease them. And by all means jack up the crust with Ritz crackers to tease them. The salty switch up will beam them to a star and back. They will wail uncle. If that doesn’t work, give them death by chocolate. Notice how the food choices have gotten progressively worse? Can I get a woot, woot?



Actually,I do eat healthy. My thoughts are these: eating right is doable as long as we throw in those occasional, well loved treats.


Hey now,foodies, what makes your Taste Buds tingle?

Well, peeps, my job here is done. This finishes out my five senses series. Hopefully, you smell better, not you personally, although that’s a plus. And dream of touch and hear and see things you might have missed, and taste it all. If you’re begging for food after reading this post, please don’t blame me. I’m just the lowly writer, clasping my occasional bowl of Captain Crunch.

Please stay tuned for a hair raising sixth sense post, coming up.

Lipstick Kiss

When my middle child-a mama’s girl- started kindergarten, she clung to my waist like lichen on stone. The separation for us was painful, me leaving her, crocodile tears in her eyes, a little waif dressed in tiny jeans and a yellow shirt sprinkled with daisies. I’d done my best to prepare her. She’d been to Pre-K and had play dates. But this little sensitive, towheaded girl still resisted leaving her mama. Out of desperation, before we left the house, I put on red lipstick and kissed her soft, dimpled hand, leaving my lip-print like a colored picture.

"There," I said. “When you feel sad or scared, look at your hand and mama will be there.”

I still remember how delighted she was, as though I’d plucked a secret star fresh from the sky and placed it hot in her hand. To her, it was the most famous kiss in the world. For a month after she never left for school without that lipstick kiss. Yes, her eyes still filled with glassy tears but then she’d stare at her hand, unscrew her grip, squeeze me tight and bravely walk into her classroom, carrying her Pink Flintstones lunch box.

Ironically, this mama’s girl has gone off to college twelve hours away and although I miss everything about her, the way she kissed my cheek before leaving for her daily adventures is what I miss most.

We crave touch. Some need more than others but our skin is hard wired for it. Have you ever had a hot stone massage? If not, get yourself over there as quick as possible! I’ve had one but want more. Let me describe.

Flat, slick rocks are heated, while you lay like a bird without plumage between cashmere soft white sheets, woodwinds in the air, the scent of lavender or patchouli piped in. The world drips away. The hot rocks are then placed down your spine, which further melts you like butta. Drenched with warm oil,they are then whirled, looped and kneaded with delicate intuition over every inch of skin you own and in the end you’re left on the table like a lump of sensual bread-dough, covered up and left to rise again into something gorgeous.



Warning:

You won’t be worth a flip the rest of the day. I lay about like the Queen of Sheba, pink skinned, drinking Bud Light, okay wine, and eating butter-cream chocolates and watching sappy movies, thanking the universe, my family, the masseuse, everyone and his brother. Ahhh……. We can all take a day off from the world occasionally. And should.



Me being rather curious and chatty- even during a massage, but not all of it, I swear- I asked my masseuse about her profession. Did she enjoy this, did she feel it was her calling and was it hard for certain people to relax and allow a stranger to touch them?

She told me she could feel, by touch alone, a person’s essence. She knew whether they were joyful, depressed, or in pain, emotionally or physically. “The elderly bring me the most sorrow and joy,” she went on. “Some have not been touched in so long and are in so much pain it brings them to relieved tears. What a powerful, magical gift, given and received.

Touch your stories. Touch people’s lives. Leave your lipstick kiss upon the world

Seeing is Believing

Last night the full moon appeared like a flamboyant floodlight. It seemed to echo, “Is anyone alive down there…down there…down there? It is I, floodlight moon.” It appeared close but was actually 238,857 miles away! Our eyes do play tricks on us.




Even so, they are rich visual collectors. Two blue, brown, hazel or green mini artists, taking in life portraits, freeze framing them into memory the way paint adheres to canvas. A scoop of bangs across a forehead, inky black like a raven’s wing, dead leaves twirling on bare sun drenched branches or snow swelled on the ground like thick, whirled whipped cream.

I remember seeing my newborn daughter’s eyes for the first time. Like soul windows, new, but ancient and full of penetrating light. When they lay each in my arms, of course in different years, their haunting eyes explored mine, speaking without sound. Why hello dear mama, they seemed to say. I’ve felt your heartbeat and heard your cries and laughter a thousand times. Here you are now. I see you. They knew me and I them. Any mother can tell you how poignant this is. It is something we never forget, this lavish visual communication without words. I promise not to mention babies anymore, but I do love them.

Eyes alone speak of innocence, pain, sadness, joy, confusion, wildness and sometimes evil, all without saying a word.

If we have been blessed with our vision intact, our brain does the work of preserving previous sights into memory. I can still see the metallic shimmer of dollar sunfish, greasing through an Arkansas River, sun catching the star-burst of yellow bellies. And creamy vanilla colored jack-in-the-pulpits, glazing up an Illinois spring forest we wandered through as children. And red-winged black bird eggs, pale blue-green and freckled, cuddled tight in marshy nests.

It’s exciting to use this visionary sense in our writing. Here’s an example from my WIP, The Passion Diary.

Driving through Millview, men with wilted faces sat outside Hunters Gas Mart. On splintered wooden benches some whispered and whittled while others stood, eclipsed by smoke clouds wafting from lit points of cigarettes. The locals referred to the spot as Limber Dick Corner. God help me, I didn’t want to grow old.

Turning down Main Street, earth rose behind ancient buildings, disguised in fresh paint. Brambly blackberry vines clamored up a long row of fence, berries dangling and not yet flushed purple. Trees, heavy with green foliage, clung to hillsides and I wondered what was blending and dashing through not visible to the naked eye.

This is pure visual description and why I wanted to use it as an example. I could go back and add smell-the soil, cigarette smoke, etc... I could also throw in taste-of the eventual ripened berries, but for these paragraphs I probably won’t.

Hopefully, if I’ve done my job well, visual description alone tells you this is a small town with old secrets.

So, my writing buddies, please enjoy every visual treat this week. Remember, seeing is believing…sometimes.

Come to your Senses

To me, being in a wild world with so many sights, sounds, odors, tastes and textures is a little like walking down dusty paths of a renaissance festival and being bombarded with the scent of apple dumplings and roasted turkey legs while my ears buzz with pan flutes and tambourines, all as I’m touching velvety lamb’s ears and then hard, exotic handcrafted jewelry. But there is more. Yes, taste, we must include that. How about fresh corn crepes smothered in cream and then chocolate doused strawberries for dessert?

Oh, enough, enough! I’m ready for a festival, how about you? Yeah, I know. It’s still too cold. Until then, I’ll attempt to warm up our rich creamy layers of writing. Each post will focus on a different sense and I might even bring in that rowdy SIXTH SENSE to round everything up. Okay lords and ladies, let’s begin with scent, shall we?

What is that smell?

What springs to mind here are Sunday suppers, pork loin dotted with rosemary, the scent of raisins and stuffing and spice exploding each time the oven door opens.

Aroma’s, rather delightful or not, invoke memories.

If you have a keen sniffer, you might also be able to detect a storm before it arrives. The earth is different then, soil sighing and humidity yelling. Did you know moisture heightens our sense of smell? It does. And were you aware women have a keener sense of smell? They do. As we age, our sense of smell weakens, though. Middle age is peek smelling season. I vote we all stay middle aged. Oh, wait, too late for me.

Did you ever notice that houses have layers of odors? I remember an old farmhouse we lived in, which smelled of plants, laundry detergent, and an undercurrent of all previous owners combined. It’s as though scent embeds itself into walls and floors.



In developing characters and their environments, we can see how smell could be a vivid way to make a story breathe. If we are writing about a house full of men, scents will be different. I’m telling you,I know these things. I have brothers. The masculinity, shall we say, does shout smoke, spice and sweat.

On the other side of the road, where mostly females reside, you’ll find the staggering scents of cinnamon, lavender oil, powder, perfume and candles. Of course there will be fruity odors mixed in and funky, too, depending on whether they keep a clean house and if they cook.

So, if we want our characters to live and remember that they have lived, scent is one worthy tool. It is exactly why, when I smell baby powder, I can be yanked back to a morning, fifteen years ago, baby on my lap. She has just finished her oatmeal and given me an open-mouthed kiss on the cheek, leaving a smear. There is sticky oatmeal in my hair, too, left from chubby fingers grabbing to draw me close. I can still hear her coo at the birds, so early my eyes are barely slit open, but yet I’m chattering to her and overwhelmed with tenderness. Yes, baby powder can snap me back that fast.

Our world is one big, smelly memory.

This week I’m taking my basket of scent and sprinkling it throughout my work. How about you? What particular scent fires up your memory?