Memories, imagination, old sentiments,
and associations are more readily reached
through the sense of smell than through any other channel...
---Oliver Wendell Holmes
My husband tells me I have a crazy good sense of smell. I also feel like my sense of smell is extra in-tune with my memories...but maybe it's this way for everyone. I can smell something from 20 years ago and instantly be back at a certain place....surrounded by certain people. The smell of men's cologne and toothpaste reminds me of my dad. Every morning he would leave for work and the smell of both mixed together would linger long after he had left. There have been times when I've been standing in the kitchen cooking and the smell of food, mixed with dish soap and the smell of outside from the breeze coming in from an open window or door will put me at my grandparents house again. I can picture my grandmother standing at the sink with the little white lacey curtain blowing in the breeze. Sometimes I get dizzy from the force of the memory a smell invokes.
Anyways...I got a magazine in the mail a few months ago and it had a perfume sample sheet in it. I'm not sure what those are called...are there names for those things? So the second I pulled back the edge of that sample, I was instantly taken back to my grandparents again. Every summer my mom, my sister and I would go to my grandparents house. Usually for 3 weeks...if we were lucky a little longer. Every Sunday (twice a day) and on Wednesday nights we would all load up and go to church. I have no idea when Grannie started wearing Youth Dew by Estee Lauder but as far back as I can remember that was her smell...and I loved it on her. So as we would pile in their car, I would smell Youth Dew, hairspray, Grandpa's cologne and usually fruit flavored Certs or Juicy Fruit gum, whichever Grannie had in her purse. All of that is mixed together is this perfume and I can't get enough of it. Karen bought me some for Christmas and I did a pencil picture for the 365 project with it today. I think tomorrow I will need to buy a pack of Juicy Fruit and chew a piece on the way to work...