Tonight, as I was wrestling my almost-two-year-old into the bath, I had the occasion to smell her white-blonde hair and it immediately triggered in me a vision of carefree children playing in the springtime sun. It was gorgeous and immediately comforting! What a powerful scent! It made me begin to take inventory of some of my favorite scents, and therefore memories, in my sometimes too-cluttered attic mind of bygone days.
Here is my Top Ten List of memory-inducing, body-halting scents that I am so fortunate to come across in my day-to-day life:
10. Laundry drying in the sun
In this age of modern convenience and front-loaders, we don’t often have occasion to dry clothing outside in the sun. Where we live, we also have an ultra-conservative homeowners association that would take exception to a clothesline installed in the backyard, so I need to do stealth laundry drying for some of my major cotton items: quilts, blankets, throw rugs, etc. When I quietly bring these items inside, looking over my shoulder for the HOA narcs, I always take a deep, cleansing breath of the smell only Mother Nature can provide. Yankee Candle has tried to capture and market this scent in their “Clean Cotton” line of products. They do an adequate job, but nothing can compare to a basket of freshly laundered linens brought inside to brighten up a home.
9. Freshly cut grass
I grew up in the beautiful Northwest—Tacoma, Washington, to be precise. This is the land of the Mount Rainier, gray skies, and rainy days, but also soft, carpet grass that you can walk on barefoot all summer long. To this day, when I smell the fresh cuttings of grass, I remember the cool evenings that called for a light sweater and being able to lie down on the grass, without a blanket for protection, and gaze at the stars. I live in Austin now—home of the hearty, drought resistant, and terribly painful St. Augustine grass. We have almost a third of an acre of this stuff and I cannot go outside without something covering my feet for fear of attack by fire ants or chiggers. I am frankly surprised that anyone down here knows about the game croquet, because there is no way you can set up that game here on this wild, jungle-like grass that we have. (I know—because we have tried!)
