Do you smell that?
I recently read a thought-provoking article about smells that are slowly disappearing.
Smells have always interested me more than they should. I have an oversensitive nose, but mainly I think it’s because I’m a documenter by nature and there’s no way to truly preserve a smell.
I have zillions of photos, quotes, books, journal entries, Post-It notes… I’ve got it all.
But I will never, ever have a single bottle of what my grandmother’s house smelled like, or a cologne that matches what the top of my son’s head smelled like for the first six months of his life. (Did you know baby-head has a certain smell? It really does, I’m not making that up.) And yeah, you can go buy a bar of your mother’s old soap — but it won’t smell like her, just the soap.
Scientists have proven that our olfactory sense is the most direct route to memory.
And I can’t save any of it.
That eats at me sometimes. I would love to be the person who invented a hard drive for smell capture.
In the meantime, though, what I can do is write about those smells. Those words, I can save. It’s as close as I can get.
So here’s a writing prompt:
Tell me ten smells that have mattered to you.
Here are some of mine:
~ mixed-up Halloween candy that’s been in the same plastic bowl for two weeks,
~ my husband’s pillow after he’s left for work in the morning,
~ the green-paneled bedroom I had when I was ten (with cheapo fruit-scented Avon perfume, mini-marshmallows, Strawberry Shortcake everything, a bucket of broken crayons, the lilac bush outside my window, the comforter my old dog always slept on, and other assorted things),
~ a 1980s, well-Aquanetted girls’ locker room (I didn’t say it had to be a good smell, did I?),
~ my old car when the windows were down in a light rain
~ Pine Brothers soft honey cough drops (they’ve remade these, but they are completely different and horrible.)
How about you?
.
– the lilac bushes behind our old swingset
– whatever was in those little yellow and black clairol things from when mom dyed her hair
– our old bathtub toys….mold? maybe
– the smell of the kilgore’s house when i babysat for them – someone turned in some books the other day at my library that smelled just like it!
– a cat after its been outside
– strawberry stuff reminds me of my medicine i had to take for ear infections.
– mulberry reminds me of illinois…maybe we had a candle or something?
I came across one of those little Clairol things in my storage building a few months ago, and opened it to smell it. (That could have gone really badly, now that I think about it…) I know exactly what smell you mean!
It also reminded me of red-and-black check boxes (from the bank) with a certain kind of marker in it, that Mom used to keep. Can’t remember the details, but I can smell the combination if I close my eyes.
And your mold comment reminded me that the smell of mildewed wood takes me right back to the old basement family room, where I loved to hide out and read for hours. Forgot all about that one.
Isn’t it weird, horrible smells turning into warm fuzzies?
Honey suckle by the swings at my grandmothers.
The kind of musty smell of a fluffy stuffed animal a boyfriend gave me that I kept for about five years.
Baby smells after their bath.
Yellow Roses that Julian often brings me.
My dad’s pipe when he was trying to cut down on cigarettes.
A light spring powder smell the nun principal where I taught used.
Nursing home smells.
Fresh baked bread.
The ocean smells when you get close enough.
The smell of a light spring rain.
The smell of vegetable soup that I always make the first week of cool weather to celebrate fall.