Funny how a smell can take me back in time. When I hug my daughter, who is now 30 years old, she smells the same to me as she did when she was a baby. She has a scent that belongs to only her. When my daughter was in the hospital after her accident, that scent was incredibly strong. It blanketed me the moment I walked into her hospital room, every time I walked in the room. I never told her that. And Emma. When she was a baby I could sit with her and smell the top of her sweet head for hours and never tire of it.
My grandmother had a scent that has stayed with me all my life. I remember a time not too long ago. I was going through a difficult time in my life but pushing through it. One late Saturday afternoon I was standing in my kitchen and there it was. MaMaw's scent. It lingered for a while and it was gone. Imagination? MaMaw trying to tell me it would all be okay in the end? My mind trying to comfort my heart? At the time, my daughter and granddaughter were living with me. I didn't mention this to my daughter but she overheard me telling my mother about it the next day. She came to me and told me that she smelled the same thing in her room. MaMaw.
Today, I was making supper early so it would be ready for Emma. (One can hardly call country style steak dinner, so.... supper.) Emma loves country cooking so I decided to make country style steak. We don't eat like that often so it's a treat. While supper was cooking and smelling so much like MaMaw's house on Sundays, I sat down at the kitchen table to make a few reminder notes. While the smell of supper cooking was wafting through the kitchen, the back of my neck and arm started to tingle. I stopped writing for a minute and the tingling went away and came back. I thought about it off and on all day, wondering what it was. Most folks would say it was nothing but I choose to believe it was something.
Several years after MaMaw passed away, my uncle renovated her house and moved in. My husband and I stopped by one afternoon to help him with something. It was 5:00. Suppertime. When we got to the back door, I could smell supper cooking. The smell was as overwhelming as if the biscuits had just come out of the oven. This was in 2000. MaMaw left us in 1993. Imagination?
Most of my memories are accompanied by smells. I can still smell the halls of Grove Park Elementary School. My daddy and the pleasant mix of English Leather and Winstons. The flowers on a Sweet Bush or Carolina Allspice, I think it's called. When I was a little girl, I loved to have those flowers to smell. A kind old man would let me pick them and I would wrap them in a wet paper towel and "tin foil" to take home. I would smell them until the flowers fell apart.
Emma stays with us on Wednesday nights. We read a story and as always, I snuggled with her while she was falling asleep and there it was, that sweet, sweet smell she brought with her into this world.
You do have a gift...
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