Fragrance Past

They say smell is a strong trigger for memories.  I believe it is true.  The smell of a gas cook stove and bacon sends me right back fifty years into my grandmother's farmhouse kitchen.

Mother's mother died young, and Mother put some of Grandma's clothes in a plastic bag to keep.  One day I found the bag and asked Mother why she was keeping the clothes.  She confessed that from time to time she would open the bag to smell the clothes.  Then she let me smell them.  The clothes smelled like my grandmother, and Mother was keeping that smell, that part of Grandma locked up for as long as she could.  It was a comfort to her.

Now when I visit Mother, I find myself smelling her hair and inhaling her scent when I hug her. It is the one part of her that hasn't been lost or become changed beyond recognition.  Her smell, despite the nursing home and the institutional soap, is still the same.  It is still her.  I can close my eyes and remember the Mother who comforted me as a child when I was sick or afraid.  I can still smell the Mother who walked in the woods.  She still smells like the Mother who made my clothes and ironed my dresses for school.  I can still smell the Mother who kept me from wiggling in church by resting her hand on my knee.

The smell is the same, and sometimes, for just that briefest of moments, I can have my mother back. It is a comfort to me.