"When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory" -Marcel Proust
I've been using the same liquid fabric softener for almost 2 years now. Last week, I was at the store to buy some more. I looked at all of the different scents and took the lid off to smell each one. I decided to be "adventurous" and ended up buying a different scent than I normally used.
We have some what of a tradition in our family. Whenever I wash the kid's blankets, I give it to them right after pulling it out of the dryer. Their little bodies wrapped up in that warm, clean blanket is like a bit of heaven for them. Well, on Friday (my laundry day), I gave Steven his blanket fresh out of the dryer, washed in the new scented fabric softener. He wrapped the blanket around him and brought it to his face, inhaling the new scent. Steven looked at me and said, "This smells like Grandma and Grandpa Weller's house when they lived in California. I love this smell!" I walked over to him and smelled the blanket. Steven was right! It smelled exactly like the house I grew up in. I was surprised that Steven remembered what the Pacifica house smelled like. The last time he was there was when he was four years old.
It's amazing how smells can take us to a place where we wished we could have remained and others we could not wait to leave. The smell of the water from a warm hose mixed with a faint smell of rainwater. The smell of cologne and the boy I dated. The smell of big beaches and seafood markets and damp fog that reminds me of growing up in Pacifica. Or the smell of Hamburger Helper making me gag because I became sick after eating it. In this case, Steven was taken back to a place he loved.
