The world you’re plunked into is the one that will hold. Certain odors will stick: melted cheese transformed into a crisp filagree along a sandwich edge; stewed tomatoes, metallic as tarnished silver, bleeding into a wedge of macaroni and cheese. Smoke spirals from a cigarette, a dark-haired Bob Barker waits with a sanguine smile as the announcer orders another contestant to “Come on down!” In the warmth of her grandmother's bed, a little girl watches To Tell the Truth, the air conditioner stopping and starting in the humidity of an Eastern Shore afternoon.

This is the sensory soup of childhood. It is a mix of family and location, of bad luck and lucky streaks. We continue the pattern with our own children, begin the silent lessons, mark them with heavy hands: this is who you are, who we are. Whenever my son smells oatmeal pancakes or plucks a plump blueberry from a glass bowl, the past will live. "You Are My Sunshine" will conjure up a darkened room, my soothing cuddle against impertinent wakefulness. He may spend years in therapy trying to get my voice out of his head, only to find that same voice coming out of his mouth in middle adulthood.

I can only hope that his experience is as painless as growing up can be. Sometimes my best won’t be good enough.

I remember being seven, lying on that flowered couch in my grandparents’ family room, my hand sunk into a plastic bag full of cherries. Cold from the manufactured air, goose-pimpled, I clutched a pillow for warmth. The television, which was as much a piece of furniture as an entertainment device, was showing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat.

That night I would have another asthma attack, whether it was because of mildew, cat hair, cigarette smoke, or my own melodramatic emotions is up for debate.

Image: Me and my grandmother, Hollywood Beach, 1973.

Tags: soup of childhood, drama queen, family, grandmother, grandparents, meals, Nostalgia, Therapy, imprinted by family, parental guilt