For some reason today senses are really heightened for me. Maybe it’s simply a matter of being rested enough to feel more fully in my skin. And also regularly having some gratitude these days that I can smell things. I spent a period of a few years with fairly chronic low grade congestion which was chalked up to allergies. The thing that I noticed most about it is that my sense of smell was really dampened, when previously it had been fairly sharp.

Somehow, through no real action on my part, or at least nothing I’m aware of, it has cleared up and I’m smelling things all the time again. Mostly this it great except of course when it isn’t – like all of real life it’s a mixed bag and of course there are some odors I’d rather skip.

Earlier this morning , in a quiet still sleeping except for me house, I made scones. And I was struck by the rich scent of the pumpkin, the sweet spiciness of the nutmeg I had just grated and was sifting into the flour with my fingers. For a few moments it was delicious to just breath it in.

And later in the morning – I had a coffee. Called a Hot Cinnamon Kiss and offered only seasonally in February at Wegmans, it’s essentially a cinnamon latte with a bit of cayenne for extra kick. I mostly stick with regular coffee but I love this one and order it in season as an occasional treat. And today, the taste of the cinnamon transported me back to my so much younger community college days and a cinnamony drink called a Delaney which was my favorite order, back to another era when coffee houses were a pretty fresh concept and so was all of life.

And then, still with cinnamon, further back, to my younger teens and traveling to DC to visit aunt Sherry, who is not a fan of chocolate but loves most if not all things cinnamon, and added cinnamon to the morning coffee we drank daily that week. I was 15 when Sherry invited me to visit her, set me up with metro pass and told me where it was okay to walk and what places to avoid and left me free to explore all day while she worked. And with that gave me a sense of autonomy and freedom I’d never before experienced and took too like second nature. She gave me a window into her world, that of a powerful and confident working woman. This was so foreign to me compared to my other influences that I was never as a young woman able to see myself in that role, but I have wondered often since becoming an adult how my life might be different if I had had more and/or more regular role models like this.

This afternoon I felt and saw the warm sun coming through the window as I dozed on the sofa. Dozed and felt the warmth of the sun and weight of my little dog sleeping on my chest, drifting in and out and intermittently hearing the soft snuffling of his breath.

The best of my days are almost always the simplest, soaking up this kind of loveliness in all the small things.