The Smell of Home

It's been a nice break. Nice to be home. Nice to have LeGrande off and able to share it with me, at least for a couple of days (he is off one more day while I return to work tomorrow...poor me). Nice to visit friends and catch up on our lives. Nice to take care of dental and haircut appointments during the day instead of cramming them in after school.

That's not the point of this blog, really! On Friday after LeGrande and I went out for breakfast, we were driving home and had the windows open to enjoy the warm, spring air. We drove past a dairy farm about 4 miles from our house, and were hit with a waft of warm, manure-smelling air. The dairy farmer was using organic, "homemade" means to fertilize his grass fields for his herds. "Ick", I said. "Mmmmmm!", said my husband..."that smells so good. It smells like home." He went on to explain that growing up on a dairy farm, that smell was so common to him that it reminded him of the innocence and security of his childhood.

At first I thought that this affinity for the smell of raw manure was really weird, but then I started thinking about the smells that take me back to the simple goodness of childhood, times where the real world with it's pain and struggle was for the most part, still yet to be known, and Mom and Dad were all I needed to righten any wrong.

The smell of fresh paint or turpentine will always bring to mind my father's face, as he painted houses, first during his summer vacations and then full-time. This smell will always smell of security and strength to me.

The smell of Tropicana Orange Juice takes me back to my Great-Aunt Helen's house. We lived next door to her until I was two, but we visited them on a regular basis as they were the closest "grandparents" we had in Charlotte. She always kept the not-from-concentrate juice and sugar wafers as a snack for us when we came to visit. Just a whiff of juice reminds me of afternoons in her kitchen, usually playing with dolls she had knitted for us.

Likewise, the smell of pipe tobacco brings to mind her husband, my Uncle John. We spent lazy summer afternoons on their porch on their aluminum glider or playing under the trees on their shady lawn.

There are more...my mother's perfume, my grandmother's applesauce and homemade biscuits, the way lipstick smelled to me when I was a little girl (the smell of "dressing-up"), and the smell of honeysuckle in late summer.

What a gift, that our sense of smell is so closely linked to our memories, and how quickly it can trigger those memories from wonderful times long past. If you are a reader, I would love to hear what smells take you back to childhood, and what "smells like home" to you.