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.”

Caring Capacity

We all carry baggage. For some of us it can be heavy emotional baggage, like wounded hearts and scarred souls, for others it’s more physical in nature, like those who can’t let go of body weight or possessions, and then there are the ones with what I call familial baggage; like children and aging parents. But if you are really lucky the only bag you carry is your gym bag or your lunch bag.

Emotional baggage can result from a bad breakup, stress in your life, or a traumatic event. For many people the presence of emotional baggage trumps everything, especially new relationships. Emotional baggage has followed me from time to time stymieing my urge to focus on a relationship. Many years ago when I was a couple months into dating a new guy my family lost their house to a fire. Oddly enough the house fire left me cold, and even though I had been dating this guy for a while, I couldn’t continue with the relationship. I simply lost all feeling I had for him. It was strange to suddenly feel absolutely nothing. Ironically, this house fire, while creating emotional baggage also helped me get rid of the physical baggage in my life.

Physical baggage comes in many forms; excess body weight, overstocked cupboards filled with food items near or past expiry dates, closets filled to the brim with ‘just in case’ clothing items that haven’t been worn for over a year, and even cluttered and paper covered desks because you are just too busy to file things in drawers or the round filing bin on the floor. I think shedding physical baggage is probably the easiest for me. I feel lighter when I am able to organize my living spaces and make them esthetically pleasing places in which to be.

Finally there’s familial baggage. I loathe calling my children “baggage, but they come with me no matter what I do or where I go, and when describing who I am my children are inevitably a part of that description. That said they are the best kind of accoutrements and I love surrounding myself with their presence. It wasn’t until I began dating again after my marriage ended that I noticed a big difference in my “post children” dating style. The freedom to go out spontaneously had been replaced by compromise. I quickly learned the type of person I wanted to date by his acceptance of my scheduling conflicts. There were some people who, once they found out I had children, were gone in a flash, sometimes even before our first date. What worked best was when I met someone who was both cognizant of my situation and who came with similar baggage of his own. I think that I was drawn to the same. I have dependent children and he has an aging parent, both of which require time and patience and an unending ability to empathize. There are many days we share our responsibilities (these are also the times when we must share our affections with others) and there are other days where we each shoulder the entire load ourselves. Our caring capacity does not diminish with this added responsibility. Conversely it continues to grow. It’s what makes us human.

Remembering

My sons are in Air Cadets and will be attending a Remembrance Day Ceremony tomorrow. Their paternal grandfather didn’t fight in the war, but taught pilots to fly during that time. They have heard stories from their father passed down from his father. The war is more real to them than many of their friends because it has a face on it.


I am not old enough to remember a time when then world was at war. I am glad for that. But I am old enough to keep the memory alive for those who gave their lives for us.