Nothing brings back the past as powerfully as the scents we inhale. This is not a new idea; Marcel Proust hammered it home in seven volumes. Walking along a darkening street in the late afternoon with the aroma of dry leaves in the cold air adjusts my metaphysical clock as surely as “falling back” to standard time every autumn causes me to adjust the actual clocks.
These are the days when the evening kitchen smells of soup and the house smells of the dust kicked into the air by radiators returning to life for the first time in five and a half months.
Some aromas are personal, like the dry, desiccated odor of wicker furniture that always reminds me of my Uncle John’s cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario. The odor of mothballs, on the other hand, reminds me of my German grandmother’s ongoing, victorious battle against dirt and disorder in her house.
Brooding on the memories evoked by aromas leads to consideration of time itself. I suppose it’s natural for any of us to think the span of our own lives is short; I’m still young, right? If I remember something from my lifetime, even my childhood, it can’t have been that long ago, can it?
When I was growing up, the scattering wind had not yet blown American families all over the continent. Although my grandparents emigrated from Europe, we had three generations of the family – both sides, with uncles and aunts and cousins – all in the same city.
Once or twice a month, we’d gather with one side of the family or the other for Sunday dinner. Whether we were the home team or visitors, my brother and I were required to wear the dress slacks and shirts we’d worn to church that morning, although we were allowed to liberate our necks from our ties. We’d approximate acceptable behavior through the parlor visit and meal. The aroma associated with all this came after dinner – coffee and cigarettes. Maybe some families still have Sunday dinner, but what group of adults in 21st century America sits around drinking caffeinated coffee at six o’clock on a Sunday evening? Who smokes?
The people who sat around those tables, the ones still alive, have their Sunday meals from Maine to California, from Vermont to Florida. We don’t eat together, we don’t wear our good clothes and church-going ain’t what it used to be.
A few years later, as a young crime reporter, none of the grisly scenes I attended affected me as potently as odor of the houses of the poor, where my work so often took me. Cigarette smoke again – but stale, kerosene from cheap space heaters, fried meat, human sweat, sour unwashed bodies and air that had been breathed and rebreathed with no hope of escape to the outer atmosphere for refreshment. In the worst cases, this melange was topped by the cloying odor of decaying flesh. The reports I filed were sober, just-the-facts statements of the case. My editors would not have tolerated feature-story descriptions of the reek of death, even if my prose had been capable of capturing it.
A few weeks ago, I was breathing at a bookstore checkout, when the young cashier’s candy-scented perfume knocked me into a time warp. Suddenly it was the fall semester of 1977 and I was sitting in the back of Mr. Martin’s trigonometry class, falling hopelessly behind not only because of innate mathematical incompetence, but by the smell of that same candy-coated perfume wafting off the girl who sat in front of me, the one who rendered me incapable of speech when she looked my way. Is it possible that teenaged girls are wearing the same scent today as they did 30 years ago? Hard to believe, but my nose says yes, definitely.
What’s this got to do with anything? Nothing, really. I just noticed the smell of the leaves as I was walking earlier this week. They smell moldier this year than in other autumns from all the rain we’ve had. It’s also that I’m breathing easier this week than I have for the past few years and I finally feel as though I have the luxury of writing about something besides politics.
Breathing Easier
Nothing brings back the past as powerfully as the scents we inhale. This is not a new idea; Marcel Proust hammered it home in seven volumes. Walking along a darkening street in the late afternoon with the aroma of dry leaves in the cold air adjusts my metaphysical clock as surely as “falling back” to standard time every autumn causes me to adjust the actual clocks.
These are the days when the evening kitchen smells of soup and the house smells of the dust kicked into the air by radiators returning to life for the first time in five and a half months.
Some aromas are personal, like the dry, desiccated odor of wicker furniture that always reminds me of my Uncle John’s cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario. The odor of mothballs, on the other hand, reminds me of my German grandmother’s ongoing, victorious battle against dirt and disorder in her house.
Brooding on the memories evoked by aromas leads to consideration of time itself. I suppose it’s natural for any of us to think the span of our own lives is short; I’m still young, right? If I remember something from my lifetime, even my childhood, it can’t have been that long ago, can it?
When I was growing up, the scattering wind had not yet blown American families all over the continent. Although my grandparents emigrated from Europe, we had three generations of the family – both sides, with uncles and aunts and cousins – all in the same city.
Once or twice a month, we’d gather with one side of the family or the other for Sunday dinner. Whether we were the home team or visitors, my brother and I were required to wear the dress slacks and shirts we’d worn to church that morning, although we were allowed to liberate our necks from our ties. We’d approximate acceptable behavior through the parlor visit and meal. The aroma associated with all this came after dinner – coffee and cigarettes. Maybe some families still have Sunday dinner, but what group of adults in 21st century America sits around drinking caffeinated coffee at six o’clock on a Sunday evening? Who smokes?
The people who sat around those tables, the ones still alive, have their Sunday meals from Maine to California, from Vermont to Florida. We don’t eat together, we don’t wear our good clothes and church-going ain’t what it used to be.
A few years later, as a young crime reporter, none of the grisly scenes I attended affected me as potently as odor of the houses of the poor, where my work so often took me. Cigarette smoke again – but stale, kerosene from cheap space heaters, fried meat, human sweat, sour unwashed bodies and air that had been breathed and rebreathed with no hope of escape to the outer atmosphere for refreshment. In the worst cases, this melange was topped by the cloying odor of decaying flesh. The reports I filed were sober, just-the-facts statements of the case. My editors would not have tolerated feature-story descriptions of the reek of death, even if my prose had been capable of capturing it.
A few weeks ago, I was breathing at a bookstore checkout, when the young cashier’s candy-scented perfume knocked me into a time warp. Suddenly it was the fall semester of 1977 and I was sitting in the back of Mr. Martin’s trigonometry class, falling hopelessly behind not only because of innate mathematical incompetence, but by the smell of that same candy-coated perfume wafting off the girl who sat in front of me, the one who rendered me incapable of speech when she looked my way. Is it possible that teenaged girls are wearing the same scent today as they did 30 years ago? Hard to believe, but my nose says yes, definitely.
What’s this got to do with anything? Nothing, really. I just noticed the smell of the leaves as I was walking earlier this week. They smell moldier this year than in other autumns from all the rain we’ve had. It’s also that I’m breathing easier this week than I have for the past few years and I finally feel as though I have the luxury of writing about something besides politics.
© Mark Floegel, 2006