“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”
— Alain De Botton
August is a sensory experience. Somehow it combines both the essence of summer and fall together. August is the smell of a fired-up grill, freshly mowed grass, books, crayons and play dough. It is intoxicating.
My mind still clocks a “back to school” feeling, even though our children have been fully out of high school for nearly a decade now. Perhaps we never really outgrow the lure of crisp new notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils?
Late summer is the scent of boat fuel and lake water — a wonderful musty sort of scent. There is also the sharp tang of chlorine in a swimming pool. Sunscreen and fresh berries when they are warm from the sun. Coppertone, silly putty and vinyl records all mingle in the memory of my childhood along with the heady scent of the lilacs that grew on an enormous bush in Gram’s front yard. I have never been able to grow lilacs like that — to my endless chagrin.
I know I still have pieces of my childhood embedded in my senses. I can still smell the mudroom at my Gram’s farmhouse — somehow clean but dusty simultaneously. It smelled of leather from old saddles stored there too.
Some scents are only precious to due to the people associated. I know I am supposed to abhor cigarettes. Nonetheless, a cousin and I once laughed over the fact that we can both wax nostalgic over a whiff of cigarette smoke — the kind our grandmother smoked. She was also an amazing cook, baker and horsewoman so it’s patently unfair that it’s Kool menthols that stoke our memories, but here we are.
My great-grandmother smelled of Jergens original almond and cherry lotion, ironing starch and geraniums.
The older I get, the more homesick I am for a place that does not exist anymore. I love my life now. I wouldn’t go back to childhood for anything. A visit maybe, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Still, sometimes I just miss the past with an ache that is physical. The smell of the old wood floors in the house I grew up in. A jasmine incense (it was the 1970s) and the smell of hot blacktop after rain.
Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to a moment in the past. Yet I’m often unable to identify where it’s coming from. I’d make a candle out of it if I ever found it even if I would probably only sell one to myself.
