There are seemingly insignificant moments in my life that crystallize into images that stay with me for a very long time. These images, more associated with feelings than memory, might seem unremarkable, yet they serve as personal guideposts for living.

Once, while making breakfast for my family on a Sunday morning, I slipped an apron over my head and was reminded of a similar action by my father many decades ago. A baker, Dad wore a white apron to work every day; when not at work, he kept it on a nail in the basement stairwell of our home. My putting on an apron had triggered a sensory response, and I could smell again the yeasty mix of grease and flour of my father's apron.

My action was so reminiscent of my father's, and today I associate that apron with my father, whose quiet nature always seemed overshadowed by that of my mother's.

Another reoccurring image is that of my mother bending forward in her wheelchair to smell a flower in my hand. I can still see the soft curve of her neck and shoulders as she breathed in the flower's perfume. But today it is her vulnerability, personified by the white thin nape of her neck, that I remember most.

Or the time my five-year-old daughter and I walked hand-in-hand along a beach. Innocently, she asked why people's voices were softer when they were on vacation. Her question made me evermore conscious of my own voice, and that tone and timbre are often more important than the words we speak.

Today, I find myself pondering another image, one likely triggered by the recent absence of children in my home. This past fall, my daughter, the youngest of my three children, left home, leaving my husband and I alone for the first time in almost 30 years. Initially the house felt eerily quiet, but I am learning to appreciate that quietness and enjoy the freedom that comes with being an empty-nester.

The moment that keeps replaying itself in my mind is the immeasurable pleasure I felt from holding a smooth warm egg. The incident happened more than a dozen years ago, on a sunny summer day, when my daughter was five years old. She and a neighbor boy had gone to the barn to gather eggs. They had been away for a long time, so I went looking to see if they had gotten into any mischief.

I found them in the barn holding Silky, the only tame chicken in our flock. The neighbor boy, a year older than my daughter, explained to me that they had to wait a really long time for Silky to lay an egg so they could pet her. And then, as if to substantiate his story, he carefully placed the egg in my cupped hand.

I continue to miss the presence of children in my home, especially the innocence they embody. My daughter is now in college and the neighbor boy a strapping young man of 20, their youthfulness crystallized forever in my mind by the feel of a warm, smooth egg.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.