Skip to main content

Pour water on that memory

"Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth." Diane Ackerman


 Not long ago, my mom shared an experience she had when she was cleaning out my grandmother's basement.  She came across a bag of glass baby bottles and supplies.  Upon opening it, a scent came tumbling out that instantly reawakened memories long ago forgotten.  The combination of scents mashed together to send her flying into a foggy bank of memories she had long since lost.

 It got me to thinking about all the scents, unique to a time and place, many of which I cannot even name, that still hold power over me when I come across them again.

 A unique mash of smells harness themselves to my other senses and bring to mind a time, a moment, a period in my life that usually lies dormant.  

 Recently, I went into a Sunday school room in a church that I had not been in since I was my daughter's age and the mound of crayons and books rubbed against my senses releasing a torrent of watery memory over husks of moments that had been dehydrated for a long time.

 I have done a lot of travelling in the fall. Falls in my teens and twenties were periods of travel for me .  Now each and every fall when the cooling air hits the smoke coming out of the chimneys and mingles with car exhaust, I start to return to a back stoop of a hostel in Paris eating bread and cheese or a campfire next to the Danube.  The scent fills me with a longing.

 So many of these evocative smells do not have a name and they are just out of reach.  When I go to grab for them they dissipate. Here are a few of my favourites.

 New Dehli
fruit and wood smoke and car exhaust

My first baby
breast milk and her mixed together (haven't smelled it since, well, almost once, but then it filtered away)

 Red and White store in Eureka
creosote and..., and...something that I only smell in convenience stores.  

 Bridges Street
concrete basement smell, moth balls and sweet soap

Grade primary
rotting leaves and crayons and pencil cases (they still smell like that)

 How about you?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I entered August without you.

 I won't visit you this month.  You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you.   I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.
1 comment
Read more

Fists full of lettuce

 It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom.  She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer).  Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life.  Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years.  Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer.  It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shake your Bummy

In recent weeks, two things have come to my attention, this article by Mary Beth Williams,  T he real key to good health  and the viral hit created by Dr. Mike Evans,  23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?  Both coincided with when I was turning my attention to new years resolutions and reflecting on the year that was. Thanks to both,  a reckoning came to be.  Mary Beth Williams' candid advice was to get your heart stronger because you never know when you are going to need it.  She herself has been receiving treatment for lung cancer. Dr Mike Evans' way of putting the exact same thing? "Try to limit your sitting time to 23 1/2 hours a day".   In my day job, I sit a lot. I occasionally rise to retrieve something from the photocopier or to make a coffee, but an awful lot of the time, I'm on my bum.  This is in steep contrast to my night job. At the end of the work day, occasionally in the middle, I h...
5 comments
Read more