Memory Sense

Ever since I was a little girl certain smells would remind me of people or places from my past. It's funny how I can smell something and immediately feel like I'm being thrown into a memory. Yesterday as I passed time at the Dollar Store, I saw the Christmas garland hanging on the wall. As I strolled by with my buggy, I got a smell of it.

With just that little bit of smell, I was 10 years old again helping Mom unpack the tree decorations. I can remember pulling tape off of boxes and gently taking the ornaments out the box to lovingly unwrap them from their tissue or sometimes paper towels. I can remember finally getting to the garland and wrapping it around my neck like a scarf and breathing in the distinct smell of it. I remember helping decorate the tree and never being able to reach the top (still can't in fact). Visions of past trees full of presents underneath them fill my head. The smell of cookies baking in the oven, the smell of acrylic paint as we painted ornaments. With one scent, all my memories began to snowball.

If I smell Wrigley's Spearmint gum, boiled peanuts or a Werther's Original piece of candy, I think of my Granddaddy Taylor. I think of walking the path from my house to his house in the summer with the grass tickling my legs and the bugs buzzing in my ears. I think of the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed or smiled, I think of the many breakfasts he cooked us and how he was always trying to feed us. I can still hear his voice when he would call the house "you want some penders?" A pender was what he called boiled peanuts. He is the one that got me hooked on sausage and gravy biscuits from Hardee's with a side of egg, and I still eat it to this day. He was such a wonderful person and I miss him to this day.

Each member of my family has a distinct smell; my mom, my dad, my sister, Freddie and Kameron. It's not a smell I can place, but they smell like "home". This may not make sense to a lot of people, but it makes sense to me. I remember being upset as a child and tucking myself into my mom's lap and snuggling up to her neck so I could breathe in her scent as she soothed me. As I grew older, I remember wrapping my arms around my dad, taking a deep breath as he hugged me and all the bad things went away. The smell of Kameron's hair always makes my heart beat faster and feel like it's going to explode. When I'm upset, just the smell of Freddie when he hugs me can calm me like nothing else. My sister's scent is the only one that I can actually put into words, she smells like a mixture of Tide detergent and sweet tea. It's an odd mixture, but it smells like her and I love it. We have so many wonderful memories together. From playing in the woods as children to exploring the Art Museum as adults.

The other night Freddie was eating Cheeto's, not the puff kind but the crunchy kind. Just the smell of them made me think of my Grandmother Taylor and elementary school. I can clearly remember sitting Indian style in a chair at her dining room table after school with my eyes glued to the TV watching X-Men, with the Cheeto's bag in one hand and a coke in the other.

It still surprises me how interconnected my sense of smell and my memory are, how one moment I'm just shopping and the next I'm smiling with a forgotten memory. I'm glad that I have this ability because I would hate to forget all the wonderful people and memories I have.