When I was a kid, growing up in a small mountain town in the West Kootenays of BC, summer Sundays meant gardening and washing the concrete sidewalks. My dad was proud of the steps and sidewalks because they were the product of the combined efforts of the neighbourhood’s men, who used a hand mixer and countless wheelbarrows and spades to fill, smooth and edge the layouts. Like barn-raisings of old, this is the way things were done back then.

We kids did a bit in the garden, mostly turning the soil to find the new potatoes, but the desired job was hosing down the concrete. This also involved sweeping and sometimes raking up errant grass thrown onto the concrete by the lawnmower. There were four of us and competition was fierce. I don’t recall there being any fancy pistol grips for the hoses with shower, jet, angle, mist, or full settings. If you needed more pressure on the hose you jammed your thumb over half or more of the open end and squeezed for greater PSI. If your siblings wanted to spray you all it took was grabbing along the hose and folding it on itself to stop the flow.

Another regular feature of summer Sundays was the regular arrival, post- church, of our elderly local Catholic priest, Monsignor MacIntyre. He didn’t show up every week but often enough that my mom knew to have tea ready to steep and some baking to offer him. It was always homemade, a favourite being the pastry with half plums baked into each two-inch square, tart and sweet at once. I believe Father Mac liked them. There we’d be, filthy, grass-stained, soaked by the hose spray and sweaty to boot and he would appear around the corner of the house, at the backyard, without his cassock but still wearing black pants and shirt over a white priest’s collar. The first time it occurred there was some consternation and embarrassment at the state in which he found us, but eventually everyone got used to it.

Once the sidewalks were pristine and everything was put away there might be time to relax in the pool which my dad made from 2x4s and poly. It was great as all six of us could all fit in it at once.

After dinner, and a piece of leftover plum square, there was generally a couple hours to ride bikes, head up to the park to play or pick mystery berries, until the streetlights came on and we heard all the neighbourhood’s kid names being called up and down the street. Even when we were older we’d still head to the park but, too cool to actually swing, we’d sit on the swings, twist the chains, and talk.

Just the other day I was helping my partner soak down and fertilize the cedar hedge. No sidewalk washing these days as there’s a drought and water restrictions are a regular feature. As I stood there with the hose, turning it so the spray caught and sparkled in the sunlight as it hit the hedges, I realized how desperately I’d love to be back there, a kid in a small town, hosing down the backyard patio, horsing around with my sister and brothers, while the local priest enjoyed snacks in the kitchen.

I’m not talking about a do-over; I’m talking about a do-again, a chance to relive those times when I wasn’t encumbered by adulthood, when the future seemed endless and full of boundless potential. I experienced a sudden pang of the smell of the hot rubber hose, the delicious feel of bare feet on baking concrete being cooled by water from the hose. There was also that incredibly satisfying feeling when the stream of water pushed the dust along like a small receding tide of dark on the white bleached sidewalks.

It’s not a memory so much as a sensory echo. It reminds me that potential doesn’t simply evaporate, that as long as you’re breathing you have a future, that opening yourself up to simple sensory delights can evoke a joy you might find tough to access in daily life.

Ultimately, is there a more bittersweet, a more umami phrase, than “remember that time when…”?

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