My Nose Knows

I have a curious sense of smell. Many of my fondest and some of the not-so-fond memories have been triggered by smells. Most of them trace back to when I was young. This makes sense. Sarah Dowdey writes on How Stuff Works: “Because we encounter most new odors in our youth, smells often call up childhood memories.”

As a child I used to visit my grandparents in Sudbury for two weeks in the summer. It was always hot and dry there – or so it seemed – and my cousins and I would spend every day outdoors. My grandparents had many large white pine trees growing behind the house and when the ground was warm and the needles heated up they emitted a musky evergreen fragrance that has stuck with me for years. When I started running over 10 years ago I had a regular route that took me past a lone white pine beside the path. On hot summer days when I ran underneath this tree, the scent from the needles so strongly evoked those memories of my summers as a kid that the first time I smelled it I had to stop and take a few deep breaths because it was so comforting and healing. Even now, each time I pass this tree in the summer I am taken back to Sudbury summers.

The smell of blueberries, which we used to pick that summer as well, will also transport me back to those days.

My first kiss while wearing Orange Crush LipSmacker has lived on in my memory and I’m taken back to that exact time and place whenever I smell anything remotely like it.

On one occasion I bought some Cucumber Melon body wash during a visit to a friend in Florida. That same weekend I met an attractive man who I spent a few hours with during a group run. From that moment on, even though I never saw him again and had never even had physical contact with him, the smell of that body wash reminded me of him. I had to finish the bottle and never purchase it again as it felt wrong to think of him while showering especially when I had just started dating another guy.

When my family lost their house to a fire in 1989 I couldn’t be near a campfire for ages because the smell of burnt wood evoked those disturbing memories of watching my home go up in flames. But that one has faded – likely because it occurred later in life and also because I have been around many fires since then, and have replaced the bad memory with much better ones.

Dowdey goes on to write: “A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the ‘emotional brain,’ smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.”

Some of my favourite smells have included:
• the back of my since-deceased ex-cat (don’t ask – long story) Sid’s neck
• fresh-baked bread (again, back to my childhood when my mother baked bread on a regular basis)
• frying bacon (especially outdoors while camping)
• decaying leaves on fall forest trails
• fresh cut wood and poured cement at construction sites (yet another youth related memory - they remind me of when my parents built their very first home and my brother and I would play at the work site during the day)
• vanilla
• sun-warmed skin on a hot summer’s day (evokes those lazy hazy crazy days of summer)
• freshly ground coffee

Finally there has been much research; much of it inconclusive, that women are attracted to a man’s pheromones. Although there may not be concrete proof, I have an interesting footnote with which to end this one-sided discourse. I spent many years waking up next to a man whose scent I found less than appealing in the morning. It was never a body-odor issue, but something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. And even though I had very strong feelings for him, I just didn’t want to be close to him in the mornings. With my current partner I find myself wanting to snuggle into his neck in the mornings and breathe him in, which makes getting out of bed very difficult unless he is the first to rise. Again I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is other than that I am attracted and comforted by it. I guess that’s a good thing. As Jennifer Aniston is quoted as saying, “The best smell in the world is that man that you love.”