Friday, December 5, 2014

Your Nose Knows

As I peeled and ate a clementine today, I remembered how the aroma of a fresh tangerine always makes me think of Christmas. Apparently tangerines didn't appear in our grocery stores year-round as I was growing up. And since the fresh clementines have just appeared in the markets here, that seasonal schedule still seems to operate in 2014. I, of course, immediately segued into the way other aromas remind me of particular places or people.

My Grandmother Harrison always kept a tin of peppermints on the chair-side table in her living room. That means whenever I pop a couple of Altoids in my mouth, she instantly comes to mind. What a lovely trigger of memory! She also had a little garden behind her house in downtown Portsmouth, and grew fresh mint in one corner. (How she kept the mint from taking over the entire garden I will never know, because she had died before I became interested in herb gardening!) Sometimes when I visited her, she would let me take a few sprigs of mint from the plants and just crush them and smell them. That was a special treat.

Although I couldn't tell you what contributed to it, the aroma of my Aunt Rachel's house will always be a pleasant part of my olfactory memory. (Do we have an olfactory memory?) Every once in a a great while I will go into a house or room that evokes Aunt Rachel's house, and I remember so many good times there. Family gatherings, Christmas, crab feasts, birthday parties--I grew up there as much as I grew up in our home.

Uncle Henry's house also had a distinct and welcoming aroma which I couldn't possible trace to any one thing. But I would know it in a heartbeat if my nose alerted me. And yes, every now and then over the years I have sniffed a hint of that unique aroma and been carried back over months and years to times filled with fun and memories.

Grandmother's house, Aunt Rachel's house, and Uncle Henry's house are not available for visits any longer, but I am always hoping for an aromatic surprise to take me back there.

The Jergens hand lotion that my mother used always smelled so delicious to me. I don't know what mixture produced that fragrance. I don't run into it often, but when I do, I am changed back into that little girl who loved the smell of her mother's hands.

What other aromas trigger memories for me? The original Old Spice after shave was my father's signature scent (he called it "stinkum" when we were little). When my children were small, and we would visit my parents' house, they loved to wear "Pops' T-shirts" as their pajamas/nightgowns, using my father's oldest T-shirts. We would usually bring some of these back to Chicago with us, and I loved to cuddle with my children when they wore these shirts because it was like having my father right there with us. I wish I still had one of these, now that he's gone.

Colonial Williamsburg's buildings bear a distinctive smell, too. I spent lots of time there! Whenever I smell bayberry candles and eucalyptus (although I'm not sure it's a plant found there in the 18th century), I might as well be in CW. Do you suppose that's why I only have bayberry candles in my house? Even in the Wren building on campus at William and Mary smells like that!

Cigar smoke takes me to Paris, in the spring of 1974. My friends and I were touring the Continent on our spring holidays, and we used the Paris Metro extensively during our days there. Did every male in Paris smoke cigars then? It certainly seemed like they did. And of course, the smoke from those awful French cigarettes permeated the entire city. But Cigars = Paris Metro remains an instant trigger for me, regardless of where I actually am.

Another memorable aroma is the way a spring evening smells in Tidewater Virginia. It's very difficult to describe. Spring in that part of the world is a particularly voluptuous season. Everything blooms with embarrassing enthusiasm, and at night, when the temperature hovers between warm and cool, the smells of the grass and the flowers and just simply the air combine in one unforgettable mixture. I can't really give you a true written picture, but I miss those spring evenings.

With winter knocking at the door, I find it quite pleasant to think of fragrant flowers! And I'll leave you with one final aromatic memory: gardenias in bloom. Outside my parents' bedroom window, my mother planted gardenia bushes. I believe they came as a gift from our neighbor, Mrs. Eastwood, who had famously gorgeous gardenia bushes. In our part of Virginia, gardenias bloom in early June.  My parents didn't have any air conditioning until after I left for college, so on those summer nights we lay in bed with all windows open. The night-time breezes wafted the gardenias' fragrance through our bedroom window, and my sister and I drifted off to sleep, blessed by nature's benediction. No wonder she and I wait eagerly for the first blossoms to appear every year (from that same bush, now grown quite tall but still producing perfect blooms).

Everyone shares these kinds of memories, I know. Thanks for sharing this aromatic trip down memory lane tonight. I think I'll go and peel another clementine!

1 comment:

  1. When my dad died, the two biggest things I wanted was his T-shirts, and his handkerchiefs. And we had a gardenia bush outside our door. Such memories!

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