What's That Smell?

No, this is not a poop story. Mostly not, anyway.

Wednesday, August 23rd, 11:30pm

I am settling down for sleep, plugging in my phone and arranging my pillows.

Me: “What’s that smell?”

(no response, other than soft snores from the husband)

Me: “Oh, the boy is making biscuits.”

As I lay in the dark, reminding myself to tell the kid that he can’t be making biscuits in the middle of the night once school starts (I’m a stellar parent, you see) I started to wonder: will I forever associate the smell of oven-baked refrigerated biscuits with football season? Will the bready, buttery scent of flaky goodness conjure the image of my fast-growing 14-year-old, trying to keep his body fed while completing 3+ hours of conditioning every day?

I continued to ruminate on this idea as I walked into my school just now. Pre-workshop, the school is stuffy, scented with wax from the floors and bleach from the lockers. My classroom is dusty and musty; it has an institutional smell that will be subdued in two weeks when there are small human bodies in here, eating breakfast and sharpening pencils.

The odor will change again when winter comes. Find an upper-elementary teacher, preferably a retired one, and ask them to close their eyes. Tell them to imagine they have just entered a school hallway after recess in January. Their nose will wrinkle and they will laugh as they immediately imagine they actually smell the wet wool, sweaty boots, and unwashed snow pants.

My husband and I are currently planning our annual MEA camping trip. (MEA is the Minnesota Educators Association — Education Minnesota provides time and opportunity every year for educators to take classes and trainings for re-licensure. I try to get those kinds of tasks done on weekends and during the summer so that I have more of a “Fall Break.”) For the past four years, we have taken our family of four up into the north woods of our home state, renting a one-room cabin with electricity but no running water. We grouse hunt by day and play cribbage by night, while my daughter tries desperately to find a cell signal and my son builds an impressive campfire. This trip smells like smoke, like beef jerky, like coffee percolating on an old gas stove in the crisp morning air. It smells like my husband’s famous chili — even though two out of the four trips we’ve forgotten major ingredients. Last year we ended up with improvised sloppy joes out of elk meat. Most of all, MEA smells like the forest: damp, rotting leaves, early snowfalls, and if we’re lucky, the innards of a bird that lost its life to feed us.

Reading over that last sentence, it strikes me that aromas that may be repugnant on their own may come to be embraced when connected to powerful memories. Our county fair was last weekend, and as soon as I stepped out of the car I was hit with a perfume of manure and fried food that took me right back to being eight years old, riding The Zipper and then going to the petting barn to see the baby goats and bunnies. Back to being fifteen, and going to the fair with friends and running into classmates I hadn’t seen all summer. Back to my own kids being small, my daughter being hoisted up on a horse by an old friend of mine, heading home afterwards declaring her intent to be a cowgirl.

Every once in a while I catch a scent of jojoba oil and the memory of my grandma crashes into me like an electric shock and tears come to my eyes. Lasagna in the oven conjures my other grandmother, and the Christmas Eves spent around her table, candles in the Norwegian candlesticks that now sit on my mantle.

Have you ever visited an apartment building where you used to live, or your favorite building on your college campus, or maybe a place you used to work? If you had been asked the day before to describe the scent of these places, you would have been at a loss. But when you walk in… it smells just the same. My church is like that — I was worried when it underwent an enormous remodeling project, that the essence of the place would be remodeled as well. I need not have feared; the atmosphere is unchanged and I can still smell my childhood.

In spite of my attachment to olfactory offerings (or maybe because of) I am overly sensitive to manufactured fragrances. I avoid hugging some people because I know my clothes will smell of perfume or cologne afterwards. I have had to leave stores when the air freshener or essential oil infuser threatens to give me a migraine. My husband has retreated into the world of unscented soaps and deodorant, ensuring that I am able to be near him for extended periods of time. You can imagine the battles with the teenage boy in the house, who wants to smell good “for the ladies.” In truth, one of my all-time favorite scents is that husband of mine: coming home after working all day in the sun, smelling of sweat and silicone and glass cleaner. I bury my nose in his shoulder and breathe deeply of him and his human-ness.

What memories does your nose bring to you?

Also, is there anyone else out there who thinks that pee, fake maple syrup, and antifreeze all smell pretty much the same?

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie