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?

Comments

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

the words fell out

Despite being an introvert, I do often process big life events (and many many small ones) out loud by verbally hashing out my thoughts with whoever will put up with me. But this morning when I woke up to the big red blotch on the U.S. map...all my /the words fell out. They fell out unsaid, unformed. Got to work and probably , in another time, would have annoyed my co-workers, dominating the conversation with my verbal extrusions, but not today. I just mutely stared across at them and nodded. My dad came for lunch. Normally, we relish a good political diatribe, especially when we feel sure of our perspective, but this time, all I could do was munch on fries and marvel at all the unarticulated thoughts that I was not even bothering to retrieve. The silence inside me was noticeable. Social media was awash with reactions and I just looked away. I couldn't bear to read one word about it. I was not receptive to any reactions, accusations, reflections, words...

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.

Growing Versions

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