Making sense of scents

They say our strongest sense is the sense of smell, possibly because it evokes memories. Last weekend I followed a contemporary into the grocery store. In his wake, I was suddenly back in high school walking down a busy hallway behind any number of guys who had started dowsing themselves with English Leather. At that time, we girls were graduating from Evening in Paris to Chantilly. My mother wore Chanel No.5 and my dad, Old Spice. Any of those scents would have sent me back decades. 

Smells tell us of the change of seasons and when something is going bad is the fridge. I started a list of distinct odors and pared it down to: a walk through a spice market or past a bakery; a fishing boat, a barnyard, a freshly mown lawn; peonies, lilacs and eucalyptus; bbq, gingerbread and a fresh tomato. Like everything there is a flip side, so I need to include a dirty diaper and sulphur. One of my favorite TV series, Tenko, about British and Dutch female prisoners in Japenese camps during WWII, included an episode where they were traveling between camps and ended up at a compound that had showers. One of the women turned to the other and said, "I can smell that I don't!" I love that line.

After writing the above, I stopped and thought about our noses breathing in whatever smells there are in the air around us. A friend who recently broke her nose had said her appetite was diminished, in part because she couldn't distinguish any tantalizing scents. Another friend grieves no longer being able to bring her favorite flowers, stargazer lilies, into the house for they make her sneeze. At the office we have a conversation with new employees about being mindful of strong odors that can trigger a migraine for colleagues. I also thought about how various military organizations have utilized airborne weapons like mustard gas and how pharmaceutical companies experiment with sprays that can make some medicines easier to take.

Back to the gentleman wearing English Leather. After I smiled, I took a quick detour down a different aisle because he had been quite generous in his application of after shave. You've had a similar experience in an elevator or seated next to you at a concert. When you look, it is either someone who has started to lose their sense of smell and therefore overindulges, or someone who is just starting off and hasn't learned subtlety. Wherever you are on this spectrum, take some time this week to find a favorite smell, take a deep breath, and find someone to whom you can say, "Get a whiff of that!"

Marilyn