Breathe It In

Do you remember when you were eight years old playing in a puddle that one perfect summer? Running and laughing and free? What brings you back there when the years have passed?

For many, smell is how we get back there. It is a very important tool for memory, and in its own way, magic. Smell can transport you through time and distance instantly. You're 42 and the smell of hand sanitizer in a second brings you back to your 16-year-old self sitting in the hospital, that horrible year your uncle passed away. It is so effective that the sense can almost be overwhelming. It will catch you off guard, the laundry detergent your ex used hitting you in the face as a stranger passes in a café. For a moment you’re back, for a moment it’s like he never left. Amazing in its ability to make you feel so many things and bring thoughts flooding back.

This morning I left my apartment, it had rained early in the morning and the grass was still wet. It was warm though, a beautiful early summer morning. I breathed in and closed my eyes. I was back in Italy. Florence to be specific, walking down this road surrounded and covered by trees, grass, plants and flowers. The warm summer air coming up from the ground. As I walked to my car this morning I remembered how many times I walked up and down that road coming to and from my hostel. Exhausted, excited, nervous, stressed. I think I even told myself then to not forget those moments. The moments that seemingly don’t matter. I didn’t see anything special, meet anyone, or do anything in particular, and yet, they were perfect moments that my brain captured and protects. It only lets this memory out when the smells come in. I think rain might be tied to Italy for me. I don’t remember it raining all that much but when I smell rain on warm tile or pavement I’m taken back to sitting in a window watching it pour for hours over the Tuscan Hills and long for that space and that version of myself again. Maybe that’s part of it, it helps us return to a self that is gone, that was, just in that instant, moment, week or year but gone the next. It helps us reconnect not only to the place but ourselves a bit more.

Once in a while I go to donate at a homeless shelter I used to work at for a few years. Stepping through those doors the smell hits me and I take a deep involuntary breath. It's not a pleasant smell. It smells of sweat, body functions, odor, dirty clothes, broken hearts, hopelessness. It's a smell you'd really rather not be engulfed in. However in the strangest way, that smell makes me think 'home'. It's not that it was my home in reality but in so many ways it was. Days and weeks and months of working with people who needed so much. Sitting in that smell until I could no longer sense it, until it didn't even exist. Pouring out my heart in the only way that I could, by being present in that space. That smell now is nostalgic for me, makes me feel a deep longing to return to them.

I could list so many smells that bring me to so many places. I bet you could list thousands too. Is it your mom’s kitchen? Grandma’s clothes? Dish Soap or lavender, or the smell of coffee waking you up as the morning sun filters in your window.