This weekend, I ducked into a home store, when I was stopped in my tracks…
I picked up a soap to smell through my mask, and suddenly I was transported to my Michigan home three decades earlier. The soap smelled exactly like my dad did when we were growing up — a mix of shaving cream and musky aftershave. I felt like I was 10 years old again!
Scents are incredible for their ability to whisk people through time and space. The New York Times just wrote a story about meaningful fragrances. “Every time you notice a smell — fresh bread, your best friend’s house, a wet dog, garlic frying in butter — it means volatile particles in the air have entered your body and, just for a moment, become a part of you,” says restaurant critic Tejal Rao.
Other people piped in with their scent memories: “For years I’ve been in search of a candle that smells like Nuts 4 Nuts, the infamous New York City cart that serves these treats all over the city,” says Marc Rosenberg from Brooklyn. “I’ve never actually cared for the nuts themselves… but the aroma is pure magic.”
Another sweet answer? “I am a retired teacher,” says Janet S. Bryan from Sioux Falls, S.D. “One of my distinct memory smells has to do with children playing at a table while I play along, too. The scent is the smell of new Play-Doh.”
(Do you know you can actually get a perfume that smells like Play-Doh?)
What would you add? What scent memories come to mind? I’d love to hear…
P.S. What sounds do you love, and what has inspired you lately?
(Photo by Eva Plevier/Stocksy.)