There’s something about smell.
Aroma. Odor. Funk. Musk. Whatever you want to call a smell, there’s something about it.
You hate it. You crave it. You miss it. You gag at it.
Few senses instantly pull the kind of physical and emotional reactions as smell. If I ever walked past my ex-wife in a crowd and our hands touched, I wouldn’t recognize it to be her. But the smell of her hair would pull me around. Would fish for memories. Memories that might pull my lips into a smile or a frown.
All the power of a smell.
And yet some smells are permanently connected to happy thoughts. It’s the thumbtack holding the notecard of a memory in place. Many of my favorites to relive, to experience again, are from my childhood. Back before the world started shifting its weight onto my shoulders.
Some I forget until the dormant past is reawakened by a smell. A chemical plastic that could remind me of opening action figures or a certain fishy-metal smell of being out on a lake in northern Michigan with my dad and older sister. These are smells I can’t recall and can’t explain.
But these smells, the ones I’m going to share with you, are the ones I know will always whisk me away to happy times.
Lilac
I don’t like the smell of many flowers. Or, at least, certain flowers. Certain flowers smell of death. Of funeral homes and of sadness. There are times I’ll walk into grocery stores with a florist and that smell slaps me across the face. If there’s ever a cure for an unnecessary ice cream and Cheez-Its run it’s floral death.
But lilacs are different. In the backyard of my childhood home, lilac bushes offered up shades of lavender every spring. I called them trees for much of that childhood because I loved climbing them, in search of the thickest, longest, flowers. I loved climbing trees (outside of the time I climbed too high and the fire department had to show up, but that’s a different story), so for me, lilacs grew from trees.
I’d gather a handful, soak the stems overnight, then walk to school with the bouquet, ready to present favorite teachers with them. The entire walk to school I could smell the flowers. It smelled of fun and freedom and spring and laughter and, most importantly, the fast-approaching summer vacation.
Every time I catch a whiff of lilac I’m, for the briefest of moments, taken back to my childhood, climbing trees and enjoying life.
Peanut Butter Cookies and Paper Bags
My mom didn’t bake all that often, but when she did, she went all out. She wouldn’t simply bake a tray of cookies and be done with it. She’d bake a half-dozen trays, filling up the entire kitchen. The smell of peanuts and butter and sugar would fill the entire house. No room was safe. She’d bake dozen after dozen, with plans for the large cookie jar to hold them, but the jar never reached full. I’d do my part to scoop up the fresh cookies, edges warm, bottoms hot, and eat away as many as I could without her noticing. I’d try to reorganize the cookies, but she knew my tricks.
The thing is, the smell of baked peanut butter cookies doesn’t pull me away from the moment and transport me to that time as a child. It needs something else.
It needs paper bags.
Back before everyone was told to stop using paper bags and start using plastic, because, you know, using plastic would save the rainforest (that didn’t age well), all groceries came home in paper bags. My mom would then use them as post-baking sheets. Sliding cookies onto the paper bags to absorb the butter and other sweet goodness running off of the cookies.
There’s just a slight papery aroma a mountain of hot cookies pulls from paper bags. It’s just a hint, but enough to make it difficult to achieve. Like a secret recipe with one missing spice.
I’ve never asked anyone to bake me cookies and set them aside on paper bags. But during the few times, I feel the need to live in the past, even for a brief moment in time, I make sure to have paper bags from the store ready and eagerly waiting to lap up the butter from freshly baked peanut butter cookies.
Grass and Gas and Leather
Sure, it could be the title of a pot-smoking dominatrix’s memoir, but that’s not what I’m going for with this.
Unlike most kids, I looked forward to taking over the responsibility of mowing the lawn. With the large backyard, we had a driving mower, so at the age of 12, I was presented with the opportunity of sitting behind the wheel of a gasoline-powered vehicle. Sure, I didn’t weigh enough to keep the seat down, which meant the engine automatically shut off, and my dad wouldn’t allow me to set it at the fastest 5-gear, but I enjoyed it all the same.
By the end of the day, after emptying the mower bags a half-dozen times, and filling (and spilling) gasoline into the mower at least once, I’d smell of fresh grass and gasoline fumes.
Some evenings, if my dad didn’t have to work, he’d come out with a pair of baseball gloves and a baseball the dog may or may not have chewed on.
It felt like a special treat to play catch with my dad, the smell of leather mingling with grass and gas. We wouldn’t talk much. We’d just stand there, the setting sun sinking behind the house, a warm hue cast over us as shadows grew.
I watched Field of Dreams with my father several times. At the end of the movie, Kevin Costner’s character had the chance to play catch with his long-dead father. The two didn’t talk, they just played a game of catch. Whenever I’d turn to my dad there’d be tears in his eyes. I didn’t understand. They were just playing catch.
I understand it so much more now than I ever could. Playing catch with my dad was so much more than just playing catch. It was a bonding experience that didn’t need words. It was the smell of gasoline and leather and grass. Maybe some dirt depending on how close I cut the lawn that day. What I wouldn’t give for another game of catch. Those memories bring tears to my eyes (there are tears in my eyes right now as I write this). But they are good tears. Memories from a time now gone.
But that’s what the memory of scent does for us.
The Memory of Scent
We all have important memories tied to scent. You have them just as much as me. Maybe yours aren’t of cookies and flowers and leather, but they are there all the same. They put smiles on your face and tears in your eyes. Perhaps, like me, the memory of scent pulls from your childhood or another time altogether. The happiest time of your life might not be your childhood but of college years. Or when you first met your significant other.
The beautiful thing is nothing can contaminate those memories. Nothing can change them or take them away. They are there forever, stored away, waiting to be let out with a simple sniff. Often when you least expect it. It’s something you can’t bottle up and carry with you because if you could, the memories might lose some of their impact. The ability to turn your day around on a single pivot.
These are just some of my favorite memories connected to smells.
What are some of yours?
I was just thinking about this yesterday when I was in my garden.
Smells are visceral. The smell of freshly cut grass, the scent of newly split wood, and the aroma of rain steaming from blacktop fill me with pleasure. Burnt marshmallows too, because my S’mores needed that carbon crunch; and the smell of an undefinable flower that bloomed, only on the path I walked to grade school, smelling of JuJu Bees—I called those candies ‘filling pullers” because they were miserable to chew but man they smelled great. Also the smell of pixie sticks—grape to be exact, puts me right back in summer camp where I spent hours walking along a river, tipping that sweet sugar into my mouth trying to avoid the dry of the paper straw. 🧘🏻♀️