Member-only story
The Fantastic Memories of Scent
Sometimes your memories are all about the smell.
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…
