“Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.” ― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

My grandson, Griffin, has what our family calls a great sniffer. This is a boy who not only stops to smell the roses but the clover, the rocks, the very dirt under his feet. We have found small scented votive candles and his sister’s chapsticks in his pockets, a secret stash ready and available whenever he needs a hit of sandalwood or pink bubblegum.

He is a boy after my own heart (in so many ways!) Sitting in the row nearest the bank of windows at Park School Elementary, I waited–with sensory anticipation–for Mrs. Beebee (real name–I am not making this up) to pass out the newly processed worksheets. Hot off the mimeograph press, they were passed back, student to student. And oh, the smell! We pressed our fifth-grade noses into olfactory heaven: a mix of gasoline, Windex, and turpentine that wafted off the damp pages. Before huffing was ever a thing, we huffed and whispered to our friends across the aisle, “They’re really fresh today!” Even today, the smell of gas, Windex, or turpentine will take me back to fifth grade, Park School, under the watchful eye of Mrs. Beebee.

Scent’s sister is memory. When we smell, and smell deeply, we often close our eyes and let scent transport us. Sometimes to better times and places, and sometimes to darker times and places we would rather forget. Bleach may take us to summer clotheslines with white percale sheets or to hospital bedsides; smoke may take us to campfires with s’mores or to burnt shells of what were once family homes.

In Isak Dinesen’s Winter’s Tales, she writes:

The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night. 

Today, sweet clover sends an airy message as I walk, an aromatic echo of a younger woman’s dreams. I will breathe deeply and let my nose take me where it will.