Memory Scents

Spring has finally arrived, the flowers are popping up all over the place, trees are budding, and the air is filled with sweet smells, heavy scents of jasmine and other aromas I can’t name. Yesterday as I was out for a walk one of those unnamable scents stopped me in my tracks and I had a flashback to England. What I smelled was part of the Elderflower scent – the rough, not the sweet part.
My mother learned how to make a drink out of the Elderflower, and every year she had us outside, cutting the flowers off the bush and counting 24 per pitcher. They were mixed with sugar and water, and made a syrup, that when mixed with water, made for a pretty disgusting drink. I guess some people like it; I wasn’t too keen on it. But I loved the scent of the flowers.
I love that scents can take you to a moment in time, to a point in your own history and wonderful memories come flooding up and overtake all your senses, if even for just a moment. The smell of wood burning always takes me back to Minnesota; evergreen has me lost in Colorado memories; heavy perfume-y flowers like jasmine leads me to Buenos Aires.
Even some food dishes are tied to memories. Recently as I was passing someone’s house, I swear my grandmother was cooking her pot roast inside, and I wanted to pull up a chair and join them. And my grandfather would say, as always, “Mother, this is deeee-licious, but it just needs a little bit more salt!” Tuna casserole takes me back to my other grandmother’s house, and little hands trying to snag some chips off the top without getting a slap in the process.
And of course, Christmas has its own smells tied into it; sugar cookies baking, mint smells, evergreen, spices, hot chocolate with marshmallows, logs burning in the fireplace. Thanksgiving is filled with a mixture of everything delicious, turkey, stuffing, gravy, pies of every kind. Easter – lamb, mint jelly, lamb gravy. 4th of July – watermelon, fresh corn on the cob, marinated London broil on the grill…
Today my house is void of all smells – I am not cooking anything, I am burning no memory-inducing candles, the windows are closed to all scents wafting in from the garden. And yet, thinking about different aromas has flooded my mind with memories and I feel all warm and fuzzy. Thank God for smells!