retaining and displaying line returns in a text field

Good morning - I'm trying to get a text field with line returns in it to be stored, retrieved, and displayed the way it gets entered. Specifically, my users use a form field (html textarea) to enter some remarks....as they enter their remarks, they can hit Enter to insert a hard return, which is reflected in the textarea on their screen. Example entry: this is line1. this is line2. this is line3. Those remarks get uploaded into a mysql db, into a field defined as a text field named rmks. If I use PhpMyAdmin to browse the table, it shows the entry with the lines separated, but there are no /n's or other control characters visible. Later, the field is retrieved from the db using a php script and assigned to a variable $rmks....when I echo $rmks, it displays on a single line without the line returns, like this: this is line1.this is line2.this is line3. I have tried to work with addslashes and stripslashes, but neither has worked. I think I'm just missing something basic.... Appreciate any help or points to previous discussions......thanks...Steve