Making Scents

It is amazing to me how the brain works. How is it that a particular smell can retrieve memories you didn't even know you still had? It happened again this morning as I put on a body spray I had not worn in a long while. But with one whiff of it, I am bombarded of memories of a past umm...love of mine. It was the scent I always wore when I was with him, thus it=him. Frustrating b/c I happen to really like the scent, but wish it didn't open floodgates of memories. And yet I know another bottle of perfume would bring memories of someone else... not that there really are that many "others" (sadly.....)

But it is not just perfume... a whiff of Dove bar soap, and I am standing in my neighbor's bathroom. A wonderful woman we referred to as "Grandma" and really was all those things you want a Grandma to be... she always used Dove.... and the memories are distinctly recalled with that smell. I can practically hear her say "Kiddo, wash up and we'll have a Coke."

It is because of this phenomenon I can not use Johnson's Baby Shampoo or Gold Dial soap on the babe. Working in an ICU, these were the choices when it came to bathing your patients... so for some, Johnson's would bring warm fuzzy snuggly memories of washing their babes... I will spare the details of what it recalls for me.

Even the scent Crabtree and Evelyn tea rose brings split memories of my senior year, when I thought it actually smelled good, on me, as a perfume, and of my friend Amy's Grandma's house. I wasn't really even in her house that manytimes, but the smell/memory combination is strong.

What I really really wish for however, would be a scent that would bring instant powerful memories of my mother. In the last few years of her life, with her difficulty to breath, odors immensely bothered her. She could not handle smoke, perfume, the smell of dryer sheets on her clothes, anything really..... how bitterely ironic giving she inhaled toxic smoke for 50 some years.....But in the end, everything was unscented or odor free. For some of my siblings, I think the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking does it... to this I think, "Did we have the same mother??? She actually baked one time!!!" If you knew my mom, you would get this... that big square thing in the kitchen, it was used for storage of pots and pans....So, I go on wondering if I will catch of whiff of something (I have a feeling it will not be food related however!) and wham! will be drowned in memories of her.... until then, I guess I will just have to keep my nose open.