Everyday Canvas

My Nose Remembers

Some experiments have shown that certain smells bring back old memories from our pasts. Taking off from these findings, which memories does your nose remember?

---------

Marcel Proust, in Remembrance of Things Past, talked about smells and their ability to bring out long lost memories, possibly about a hundred years ago.

Smells have an unusual power to bring back memories, maybe because smell signals bypass the thalamus and head straight to their destinations, possibly directly to amygdala which is the supervisor of emotions in our brains. But this is an old way of looking at the pathways of smells and memory. Newer findings show an all around multi-faceted ways of the brain and the tricky manner it brings about anything into our consciousness. Whatever may be the correct version of how this happens, I do have a treasure trove of memories attached to smells.

Such as... my grandmother's pastries baking and that aroma fluttering through the house all the way to its third story, the smell of the earth after a rain, the odor of the compost pile at the corner of the backyard, my mother's perfume with the scent of jasmine, and later on, the joy I felt inhaling the baby smells, especially when I touched my nose to my newborns' necks, the smells from my once-upon-a-time rose garden, the aroma of grass right after mowing the lawn, the smell of piping hot tea or cocoa on chilly days, the scent of the crackling logs in the fireplace, the smell of garlic on my hands after I take a whole head apart to use in cooking, the scent of Old Spice on my husband, and the aroma of the honeysuckle plant on the back-porch, which never lasted long enough for me...

Come to think of it, none of the aromas and scents last long enough, neither do the people we love, but just maybe...their memories that leave behind only traces of themselves.