Home sweet smelling home!

Buster and I were out walking this afternoon. The air was full of spring sounds and smells.  Birds, wet soil, tulips, grass coming to life.  Buster of course makes frequent stops to sniff around.  Today, however, he made a particularly striking show of sniffing as we approached home.  He stopped on my neighbours front yard suddenly, nose up twitching, his little white head turning in every direction.  When I tried to pull on the leash,  he was insistent that we linger, paws digging into the grass, rear end threatening to park down right there on the ground. I got the message.

Let Buster sniff.  What is the point of a walk in the spring if a dog can’t stop and sniff? This seemed more important to Buster than most sniffs and as I watched his eyes darting up and around with a new kind of urgency and twitching of ears. I began to wonder if he was smelling smells and hearing sounds that reminded him of home. 

Buster is a rescue dog.  It’s a long story, and I’ve been wanting to share it with you.  Suffice it to say, for today’s musings, that Buster came to us by a mysterious series of events that included the potential for divorce.  Divorce was averted by two days of off and on crying (poor sweet little puppy all alone needs a home) that even I didn't understand but which served the purpose of proving to my husband just how much I needed to rescue a dog who had been found running loose in a southwestern Ontario city and who subsequently spent two months in a shelter behind bars and who was now on death row.  

Enter Buster to our home, with the clear understanding (even though my husband came up with the name), that this was my project.  Wiping away the tears, I happily agreed.  I would walk, feed, water, pick up after, whatever.  This was to be my foster dog. 

So anyway, with that all behind us my husband is now equally smitten. I knew he would come around. Of course, with both of us smitten, eventually came the inevitable decision to adopt Buster.  But what has been bothering me, is that I don't know his story. I don't know about his prior life.  Where did he live before?  Is someone missing him?  Or did someone just let him loose?    Did he run away?  Was he stolen? Who loved Buster before he came to us and why weren't they searching for him?

From time to time, Buster reacts in ways that indicates he remembers a former life, a place he lived, and the people he knew.  Of course he remembers!  Once when out walking, he saw a man and a woman ahead of us and he lunged to get to them.  Did he think they were former owners, or people he knew?  The first time he heard me play the piano, he came racing in from another room, and with great excitement and abandon leaped up to sit beside me on the piano bench as if to say," I know that sound"!.  I was stunned.  I was certain he had recognized the sound of the piano.  Had he done that before?  Whenever I play the piano, he comes running to listen. Sometimes he curls up beside me, other times begs to sit up on the bench, ears twitching to each note.  On occasion, he dances.  I'm not kidding.  When he really enjoys a piece of music, he'll jump up, and twist around in circles.  I swear he's dancing.   But my heart aches because I sense he is remembering a place he once knew as "home".

Or - is it just that I too have those memories and I'm not always sure what to do with the way I feel when I smell shortbread baking the way my stepmother's shortbread smelled in December?  What am I do with the way I feel when I hear a freighter calling in the night and once again I am a little girl at home in Grandpa's house near the Detroit River? And how lilac perfume makes me think Nanny is in the room again.  Perhaps she is. 

Sniffing, and searching, Buster would not budge as he seemed to be trying to figure something out.  It looked as if he were sensing, or thinking in whatever way dogs think, "I've smelled these smells before.  This smell, this spring air, reminds me of home". 

I thought of Mole in "The Wind in the Willows", happily on his adventure with Rat, until, 

"suddenly the call reached him, and took him like an electric shock.  It was one of those mysterious fairy calls from out of the darkness that suddenly reached Mole, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while as yet he could not clearly remember what it was.  He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the current that had so strongly moved him.  A moment and he had caught it again; and with this time came the recollection in fullest flood.  Home!"

I love the narration of Mole's grief, as he remembers the home he had left without much thought, only soon to discover his longing for his "shabby, dingy little place" in the world.  Torn between moving forward with his new friend and the desire to go back and have just one more look, Mole sobs uncontrollably until Rat like all good friends, understands and agrees to help Mole find his home again.  It was the smell that led Mole to remember and long for something he had lost.  Buster's sniffing - was it a similar remembrance?  If only I could help Buster find that place he left, if it was a good place.  But then, maybe it wasn't, and for sure, he has landed in a good home where he can dance again.

But every now and then, Buster seems to remember another place and other people. New adventures are unfolding, with lots of new people to love, and many comfy new places to curl up in.

I'm certain that Buster smells and hears the sounds of another home.

Embedded in our senses we carry the memory of a home we once knew,  a story that perhaps we are not quite able to articulate any more.  The memory is alive. The smells and the sounds echo in our hearts and when they do, like Mole and Buster, we know the call to be irresistible.  

Where is that place, your wonderfully smelly place that is home?  Is it under a tree, beside a river?  In a rocking chair,  in someones arms?  Is it the smell of shortbread baking, or the sound of a piano? Your grandmother's perfume? Chili sauce steaming in the oven in October?

Many times in my life, and too often now that I look back over the years,  I have left a home I loved in order to strike out on some new adventure.  I'd like to think maybe that is Buster's story.  Once day the fairy call to roam just became too compelling and off he went, leaving his collar behind.  Now here he is in his new home, though memories of his former life still urge him to come back.

Perhaps you also have left a home you loved.  Sometimes we were too young to even remember the change, but still, you carry in your senses the way that place smelled, felt, sounded.  Those "mysterious fairy calls from out of the darkness" come to remind us that home is always beckoning.  Backward, forward, inward, and always around us. Home!