The smell of jasmine always takes me back to a trip I made to France when I was old enough to go abroad to find myself but too young to appreciate what I found. The perfume that I bought while there, and wore until the bottle was empty, was a clear and bright jasmine scent. It was exotic and I wasn’t, so of course I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Now, several decades later, when I smell even a poor imitation of jasmine in a candle or a soap, or if I am lucky enough to catch the fragrance of the flower in someone’s garden, I am taken directly back to those days in Europe and to the effect that the scent would drape over me like a magic spell as soon as I would put some on. It was a feeling of possibility and of courage and of adventure – all of the delicious things that young people are awakened to but somehow always manage to squander.
Another smell that I love, but for very different reasons, is chocolate cake while it bakes. When I was growing up, cake wasn’t a common dessert for us, but it was always made to celebrate a birthday or special occasion. A simple chocolate cake baking smells like celebration to me to this day.
I love the smell of a roadside orchard stand during apple season. A basket of freshly picked apples smells delightful – crisp with a touch of sweet, and the promise of apple desserts waiting to be made and devoured.
The smell of rain calms me down and sorts out all of my world’s problems the second I deeply inhale it. Living in Vancouver has instilled a primal love of rain in me after all these years and, because we live in a Pacific coastal region, rain has become one of the unspoken indicators of normalcy to me.
On the other hand, the smell of wet earth takes me back to grade school and makes me want to check over my shoulder to see if there’s an 8-year-old boy chasing me waving a worm or two at the end of his outstretched grubby 8-year-old boy fingers. I guarantee you I’d start running – that instinct is Pavlovian and definitely not an easy one to shake!
Any time I open the cupboard door in my kitchen behind which I keep my unruly rows of little jars of individual spices, I get a whiff that smells to me like creativity, mystery, and imagination. The aroma of those various spices all mingling in my cupboard can be compared to walking into a busy cocktail party that you suddenly realize is going to be way more fun than you had anticipated.
Coconut body lotion smells clean and feminine.
Long-standing bookstores and libraries smell warm and rich and comfortable, and are the only places where the smell of dust seems welcoming.
Pine trees smell like Christmas.
Tea smells like contentment and safety and reassurance. Always.
Old Spice smells like my Father.
There’s a certain brand of cigarettes that, when I walk through a cloud of its smoke as I pass someone on the street, takes me back to The Fair that was held every year in our city. It must have been a popular brand with the fairgoers – at least the ones who were too old or too cool to be racing erratically around the grounds in clumps the way we kids used to do.
Walking into a photography darkroom and smelling that distinctive vinegary odor of Stop-Bath, instantly relaxes me.
These and other various smells visit me with a strong presence that can stop me in my tracks and spark some forgotten memory or emotional link. I suppose that all of my senses have their own ability to remind, and maybe it is by those reminders that we are able to keep our past close to our present in a way that will enrich us and remind us of some of the bricks that have been laid along the paths we keep moving forward on.
But of all of our senses, the sense of smell always delivers the most immediate and clearest picture. To ‘see’ our memories through a quick, and usually passing, inhalation is like having our memory banks quickly whip out a flashcard that tests our abilities to remember. It’s the one open-ended pop quiz of our lives where we actually do know all of the answers and for which we never have to study!
