Anne here, and today I'm pondering the power of scent to stimulate memory. Scent is so powerful, isn't it, and yet we have so few words to describe scents, except to say "like a lemon" or "like new mown grass." It's always struck me as an oddity in the language. I suppose we all experience our own individual version of "scent of lemon" or "scent of fresh-cut grass" so we don't need a special word for it. Maybe.
It's something I do sometimes in my books — draw on my own scent-memories to create similar-yet-different experiences for my characters. Imagining the things they see and scent and remember is a way of plunging into their reality and making their world come alive. Because despite the period and reality differences, we often share similar experiences.
I pruned a lavender bush earlier in the week, and was instantly plunged back to my childhood, where my grandmother used to make lavender sachets to put in drawers — of the sliding kind, for storing clothes I mean. Not the wearable kind of drawers. Although . . . No. Ahem. Moving on . . .
Every year or two Nana put me to work picking lavender, drying it, then stripping off the flowers, unpicking a seam in each little sachet, tipping out the old lavender, refilling the sachet with the new, and sewing up the little hole. It was a process that went over several weeks, as the lavender had to dry, and it was one way to keep a small child occupied in a house that, as I recall it, had very few books.
Yesterday I cut myself some sprigs of pine. When I was a kid, we always used to go out as a family to cut a tree, and it was a highlight of my Christmas, choosing a tree, cutting it down, and bringing it home to set up and decorate.
I'm not having a big Christmas tree this year, but for me, Christmas isn't Christmas without the scent of pine in the house — not just the needles but the fresh-cut wood. So this year I cut a bunch of small branchlets (nothing to disfigure the tree) and bound them together to make a mini-tree and stuck them in a vase. I also made some bunches to hang, and now the lounge room smells beautiful. An added bonus is that I'll have to make some mini-decorations to go with my mini tree, which will be fun.
Other scents throw me back to particular times and places in my past. My mother's last years were in a care facility. She had dementia, but they had a beautiful scent-garden in the grounds, and I used to take her here and we'd spend hours there. She'd smell the different flowers and we'd crush aromatic leaves and I could tell by her expressions that each scent evoked something, even if she couldn't explain what.
I'd talk to her about the scents some of them evoked, for instance wormwood, a silvery gray leaves had such a particular fragrance. I'd say, "Remember this? Aunty Flo and Aunty Ruby and Uncle Ern had this growing all around the chicken runs, didn't they?" And Mum would grin and nod and sniff the crushed leaves.
So now I'm thinking of some of the times and places I have stored in my memory. There is the scent of my grandfather's shed — a unique combination of oil and tangy metal (his tools were all razor sharp and gleaming) rabbit skins drying on wire frames, fishing bits and bobs, beeswax (he kept bees) and sawdust.
Last year I had my first blooms of frangipani (plumeria) and one deep sniff of that delicious fragrance takes me back to when I was eleven and my eldest sister had a wedding bouquet of it. It was the first time I'd ever seen or smelled it. Magic.
Washing day — especially when I was little, and especially at my Nana's. She did it the old fashioned way, so for me it's the smell of boiling linen, Velvet soap, starch, and scent of sunshine drying the sheets as I hid between the sheets hanging on the line, the scent of the hot iron pressing starched cotton shirts, and the pleasure of sliding between sheets straight off the line, slightly crisp from the washing and smelling of sunshine and cleanliness.
Thyme is a herb I use a lot in cooking, but I have so many memories associated with it that are nothing to do with cooking. My grandfather (my dad, too) had masses of thyme growing in the back yard, and the honey from their backyard bees had a glorious thyme-y tang to it. Years later I was in northern Greece one winter. We were climbing up a snow-covered mountain and as we stomped down through the crispy snow, the fragrance of thyme and other herbs would waft up, a memory of summer. No wonder my friend's Greek mother said my family honey tasted just like the wild honey of her homeland.
Another time I was on the Greek island of Corfu. I'd been traveling, and away from home for about a year. Near the cabin I was staying in was a grove of eucalyptus trees — eucalypts are native to Australia and to most Australians they carry the scent of home. The Australian bush (wilderness) smells mostly of eucalyptus, and I remember gathering up a handful of leaves and crushing them between my fingers. I don't know whether it helped my homesickness or made it worse, but I do remember feeling quite emotional as I buried my nose in those crushed leaves.
So, enough of my scent memories. What are some of yours?
Scents may be the most powerful memory-prodder there is, and it's not only pleasant smells like lilacs or pine boughs or cinnamon. The slightly dead fish smell of low tide always takes me back to childhood summers by the shore.
One rainy day when I was in college, I came out of my dorm and suddenly something made me feel so homesick. Then I realized that a bus had just gone by; and I was smelling the exhaust fumes.
You never know when memory is going to leap out and seize you.
Posted by: Lillian Marek | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 05:25 AM
When I was a tween, about 10 or 11, there was a gardenia bush outside my bedroom window. A whiff of gardenia brings me back to that time of safety and home.
Posted by: Kathy K | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 05:44 AM
The smell of a (working) garage. Grease and metal and gasoline...always takes me back to my childhood when I would sneak away from my mother and go "work" in the shop with my mechanic father on my own special little creeper. My father is very frail with Parkinson's and other things, so it always makes me very emotional. Has to be strange to see a middle aged woman tearing up in a garage...LOL It is our own special memory of the first time when I was about 18 months old. My mother was in full panic because she couldn't find me and daddy rolled me out from under a car on a creeper right next to him. Grease on my baby nose and a grin on my face.
My gram loved the smell of rosemary and mint so her shampoos and potpourri jars always had that blend and to this day it always brings me right back to her house crowded with knick knacks and sewing projects.
The eucalyptus reference made me grin, I dated an Aussie one summer and his apartment had these big vases of eucalyptus. He said it made his apartment "home base". So that smell takes me back to that summer. Thankfully not a bad memory. =D
Posted by: StephanieL | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 06:48 AM
Sorry, didn't mean to write a novella!
Posted by: StephanieL | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 06:49 AM
I have many scent based memories, but the first one that came to mind is the smell of grape jelly - specifically, Welch's Grape Jelly. Whenever I open a fresh jar, the aroma takes me back to my aunt's kitchen when she would make her own jelly from the concord grapes that grew in her garden.
A really sweet memory.
Posted by: Mary T | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 07:36 AM
There are many scents from my childhood. One of my grandmothers lived near a professional laundry and I can remember the scent of the soap they used. I can remember clothes being brought into the house after hanging on the line. I can remember the smell of homemade noodles at my grandmother's house. My grandfather's after shave. Newly mown grass and oak leaves on the ground in the fall. So many, and I thank you for the memories you have inspired.
Posted by: Annette Naish | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 11:59 AM
"You never know when memory is going to leap out and seize you."
That's so true, Lillian. And smells being invisible and sometimes very subtle and often absorbed subconsciously, it's sometimes hard connecting the reason.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 01:48 PM
Kathy, gardenia is such a sweet and evocative fragrance. A friend of mine had gardenias planted in what was almost a hedge along one side of her house next to her kids' bedrooms and the family room. And when the gardenias flowered, ohhh the scent. She's left that house now. I wonder whether her kids will have similar associations.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 01:48 PM
I once had a longish haired cat named Grits and I can still remember the smell of her fur when I'd pick her up for hugs. Or find her sleeping on my face, for that matter.
I can remember how the house smelled when my mom was baking an apple pie - cinnamon and sweetness. We had a lemon bush outside the back door of the house I grew up in -- most people did in LA then -- and I remember the scent of freshly cut lemons. Both things take me back and make me sad because the house is gone now and so is everyone who lived in it with me.
On the minus side of the account, I can remember how a workmate I once knew smelled. Not good. I suspect he re-wore shirts and that. As we know from Beau Brummell -- clean linen and plenty of it at all times!
Posted by: Janice | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 03:35 PM
Thanks, Janice -- those memories can be bittersweet, I know. But better to have them than not. Thinking cinnamon, years ago I made some cinnamon and applesauce Christmas ornaments, and they still carry the faint scent of cinnamon. Grimacing about your stinky workmate. Not fun.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 04:55 PM
What can I say? There's a particular aftershave that reminds me of a particular guy from the past. Definitely a memory nudge.
Posted by: Anne McAllister | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 05:14 PM
One scent that surprised me was the scent of an elementary school. I came to my teacher training a little later than my peers, and I hadn't been in an elementary school for almost twenty years. My first day of practicum I walked through the doors of an unfamiliar school and was assailed by a scent I didn't even realize a school had. The indescribable scent of chalk dust, old wood, and children hit me like a tonne of bricks. It took me back so clearly. Now, after being in classrooms for almost 15 years, I don't notice the smell at all. What I really marvelled at was the sameness of the school scent. Interesting topic.
Posted by: Jana | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 05:48 PM
About a year after my grandmother died, I received a small package that contained some of her photos and a few tiny knick knacks. On opening the box, I could smell my grandmother. I have no words to describe what precisely I smelled, but I could recognize the scent as hers even though I hadn't seen her in years.
Posted by: Kareni | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 08:00 PM
Wow, Jana, how interesting. Its years since I walked into a primary (elementary) school here. I now feel as though I need to visit and sniff. Thanks for contributing to the conversation.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 09:22 PM
Oh yes, aftershave can be so powerful. I occasionally smell my dads aftershave on some guy. One time was at a funeral and this man sat beside me and I had to stop myself leaning against him.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 09:22 PM
Kareni, I can so identify with this. I found an old box a while back with some handkerchiefs and bits and bobs in it and it smelled exactly like my mother. Like you, I couldnt identify the smell as anything in particular, but knew who it was.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Monday, December 05, 2016 at 09:22 PM
Thanks, Annette -- your recollections sparked a few of my own. I remember, as a kid, taking huge delight in jumping into the neatly raked-up piles of autumn leaves, and scattering them everywhere. This was usually followed by being handed a bamboo rake and being told to rake them back into a heap. LOL
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 12:00 AM
Oh yes, Mary, the scent of certain things being cooked is certainly a memory sparker. Lovely that you can get the same smell from a jar. Often commercially produced things don't have the same evocative smell.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 12:01 AM
Do not apologize, Stephanie -- I loved every word and I'm sure the other wenchly readers did too.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 12:01 AM
Thanks, Stephanie -- loved your story about you disappearing under the car. I can smell that mechanic shop -- it resembles my grandfather's shed, I suspect.
Hugs on your dad having Parkinsons. A tough thing to cope with.
As for your Aussie ex, I absolutely understand the leaves and "home base." I remember when I was a kid, people used to send packets of eucalyptus leaves to aussies living in the UK. Apparently they'd toss one or two in the fire, and feel all nostalgic and homesick.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 12:04 AM
The smell I kept thinking about as I was reading the blog and all the above posts was the smell of the beef-based vegetable soup my mother made weekly. I get a whiff of that memory from time to time, as I walk past restaurants. Alas, no one else seems to make quite the same combination of vegetable soup. So all I get is those tantalizing smells.
And yes, I've tried to create my own, but she used SOMETHING I can't pin down.
Posted by: Sue McCormick | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 05:51 AM
My grandfather's cigars ... the year-round wood fire in his "study" (= place for napping after the cigar) ... the bathrooms in the old Victorian house (not unpleasant, but like many people had occupied them over the years, not surprising since they had ten kids) ... my grandmother's laundry room (with visuals, too: many fluffy, ferny plants grown from avocado seeds) ... the snowball and lilac bushes ringing the wrap-around porch ... that house had character!
Posted by: Mary M. | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 06:48 AM
Well, I wouldn't say it is the same smell, but every time I open a fresh jar I'm back in my Aunt Mary's kitchen (smile).
Posted by: Mary T | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 08:13 AM
A fascinating topic, Anne. Even though we haven't a good vocabulary for describing scent, the scents themselves are so very precise and evocative.
Posted by: Mary Jo Putney | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 01:27 PM
This might be an odd one but at Christmas when someone is drinking brandy and port and I get the smell it reminds me of my Dad. He loved this at Christmas. There was never much money at home growing up but he always had this treat at this one time of the year. He's been dead a long time and was only fifty seven when he did die. Strangely enough my husband now has it as his Christmas tipple so I think my Dad will be with us for a long time.
Lovely post Anne.
Posted by: Teresa Broderick | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 01:53 PM
I also have strong scent memories of my grandfather's tool shed and my Grandmother's laundry (the soap, the blue, sheets boiling in the wood-fired copper). And my Grandmother's pantry. I've never smelt anything else like that - tinned cakes, preserves sealed with paper&paste, fresh eggs, the meat safe (non-refrigerated tin cupboard to keep cooked meat away from flies & animals).
And petrichor - the smell of the land, after a long dry, just before it rains - so tied up with childhood memories of dagging around during the long, hot, Aussie summer school-break.
Posted by: Shannon McEwan | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 03:59 PM
Shannon, thats one of my favorite smells -- the scent of rain on parched earth. I didnt realize it had a name -- thank you.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 05:04 PM
The name is very young - 1960s - care of a couple of CSIRO scientist who worked out what 'makes' the smell!
http://theconversation.com/the-smell-of-rain-how-csiro-invented-a-new-word-39231
Posted by: Shannon McEwan | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 05:41 PM
Sue, its funny -- I have a similar problem. I make a pretty good beef and vegie soup too, but I can never quite get it the way Mum made hers. And yet I spent hours of my childhood chopping up vegies for her, so youd think Id know. But nope.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 07:01 PM
Thanks, Mary -- chuckling at the study = place for napping. I suspect a lot of houses have that room. And yes cigars have particular associations and rooms. I can still smell my grandmothers house. I think if they could bottle that smell it would sell like hot cakes as a room freshener, but Ive never been able to work out its source.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 07:01 PM
Mary Jo, they are precise and evocative for an individual, but to try and convey that in words is so hard. I read that book Perfume years ago, and it was fabulous, but exhausting in the descriptions.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 07:01 PM
Thanks, Teresa -- lovely to have this memory of your dad, and that its become part of your Christmas celebrations.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 07:01 PM
What a wonderful topic! One of my favorite things is to read perfume blogs or books on perfume -- when the "noses," or perfume experts, describe a scent, they use wonderful words and interesting analogies.
For instance, one review specified that the apple scent in one perfume was not like smelling a fresh apple, but like going into an apple warehouse after the fruit has all been shipped out and there's only that slightly dusty, lingering scent, the memory of the apples. Or another reviewer who said that a particular perfume smelled like "the soul of a Siberian winter."
However, I love everyone's memories that have been shared.
Posted by: Saralee Etter | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 06:48 AM
Thanks, Shannon -- very interesting. Ive never heard it used, and to my mind, the sound of the word (to the unscientific brain) doesnt really evoke that smell. It will be interesting to see whether it ever comes into use. I had to look it up to recall it the following day.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 03:11 PM
Thanks, Saralee. I loved that distinction between fresh apple smell and the faint lingering scent of an empty apple storage place. Theres also the sweet mellow scent of old, wrinkly but not yet rotten apples, quite different to the fragrance of fresh picked ones. Wine descriptions use descriptions of fruit scents a lot, and theyre definitely becoming more poetic in their descriptions -- to the extent in some case of being a bit silly.
Am not sure about the soul of a Siberian Winter. I suspect that could have hugely varying interpretations, depending on whether you viewed it romantically, or whether you had actually experienced a Siberian winter. But its a lovely poetic image.
Posted by: Anne Gracie | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 03:11 PM