I don't know about you, but all of my life there have been what I call, for lack of a better word, "touchstones" in my life -- things bring back memories of what I was doing the first time I did "whatever" (the thing or event in question).

For example, every time I bake a cake, my brain flashes back to making a cake in my mother's kitchen in Madison, Wisconsin, circa 1965.

The kitchen radio was on, tuned to its usual NPR station, and while I worked in the very well-equipped baking area of my mother's professional quality kitchen the announcer was educating me about day-to-day life in current day Soviet Union. Remember, this was still the Cold War era...

As a result of hearing the radio discuss the Russians' day-to-day privations, I realized that if I were a teen-aged girl living in Moscow, I probably would not be able to make a cake as easily as I did -- a thing that I took for granted.

I understood for that first time that instead of just opening a cupboard door, selecting a box of mix from several, and then baking a cake, simply by "firing up" the Kitchen Aid mixer, and adding the package contents, plus eggs, water and oil... Were I living in Russia, the grocery stores might only be halls of empty shelves, nothing like our current day supermarkets.

So flash forward almost 50 years: "who woulda thunk" that the simple use of a boxed cake mix would STILL evoke that memory in me?

Here's a link to a great article by Ann Voorhees Baker that tells a similar story. For her, the talisman is her Cutco brand kitchen knives.

Is there anything you do that similarly brings back some memory -- every time you do it?

What is it that you do, and what memory does it trigger?