The sweet, timeless, smell of play

There is a feeling…not easily described…that’s without time or expectation…unhurried, unworried. It has a certain smell… like the freshly mown grass of a mature lawn shaded for years by a tall privet hedge.
My Grandmother’s frame house was just steps from the 2 lane highway in southwest Virginia. The front wall had a permanent lean from a flood decades ago. The small lawn was our gridiron. Exposed roots crept along the ground emanating from 2 massive hardwood trees, one at each end. The yard was bisected by a foot path of stepping stones, long since settled into the ground at dirt level. The path led from the blacktop through the hedge to the wooden porch thick with several layers of paint. The old porch swing was the handy photographer’s prop for a generation of grandchildren. A porch swing can give a young imagineer the impression of flying off... And we just played.

Whenever I am caught in the heavy traffic of life at full moon; when the paperwork, phone calls and undictated evals become so demanding …I can smell that old lawn smell and feel the swing’s cadence…and feel carried away. --James