Liquid embrace.

My first memory is as clear as if it were yesterday. I don't know how old I was or what I may have looked like. I remember no faces or consciousness of any visual stimuli, outside of stainless steel and flashes of skin color. All I remember was the smell of my mother’s hair, like Ivory soap and that very clean smell that you can't really capture any more since Bath and Body Works infected the innocent smell of the freshly clean. I remember the smell very distinctly. And I remember the sensation of being bathed. I was in the sink. The water was very warm and was wrapped around me like a hug. I fit perfectly into the sink like it was designed just for me. It was a womb and I was a baby. I remember my mother humming and talking to me in that voice that people reserve only for non-verbal infants and pets. I remember, most of all, an overwhelming sense of safety, love, and warmth. The water dances down my neural memory lane the most. The warm, soothing, safe water. I can still go there sometimes when things get rough and let that 34 year old water from a well tap in a house that burned once, flooded three times and is now an empty slab of concrete in an abandoned campground. You can still see the outlines of the rooms filled with all the memories or forgotten. The rock porch and waterfall that I helped my father build, in that way that small children help build, still stand as they were, minus a working waterfall pump. The well still plummets deep into the ground but no tap arises to pour warm embrace on any more infants. I can still go back there though, any time I want. That is the joy of memory. I think that's why I love water so much. My first impression of safety and embrace, pure unsoiled security, no strings attached love, came from that half-filled stainless steel sink that my Ivory clean mother bathed me in. My first lesson, security can be real. Love can be pure. I have spent a lot of energy in my life chasing that warm stainless steel liquid embrace.