I've been thinking about the nature of olfactory memory lately. Not just remembering what things smell like, or being able to identify something through smell alone (although that's kinda fun) - the smells that take you back to another time and place, or that are forever associated with a specific person or place.
My great-grandmother (technically my step-GGM) lived in Vermont. We'd visit every couple of years, usually in the summer. But for some reason, fall leaves and maple sugar, which is a spring smell, always remind me of her house. So do Blue Willow dishes, although that's another story.
One of my grandmothers wore Estee Lauder Youth Dew when I was growing up. And I completely embarrassed myself in college by commenting to a classmate who wore Youth Dew one day, "You smell like my grandma!" It wasn't meant as an insult, but that's how it came out.
This morning, I unscrewed the top on a bottle of moisturizer and the smell took me back to my other grandmother's house. It was plain, classic Olay. I can still picture the square glass bottle of pink lotion (back when it was still called Oil of Olay) sitting on Gram's vanity, with the pink nearly blending in to the pink tile on the wall. The other fragrances that take me back to that bungalow, especially in combination, are Virginia Slims or Kool cigarettes, Emeraude perfume, and butterscotch chip cookies. And don't forget the sawdust smell wafting up the basement steps from Grandpa's wood shop.
