The Smell of Memory

My Grandma Rita, 1944


What is it about a smell that can spark a nearly forgotten memory, igniting it and bringing it back to life?

My little family just returned from a week's vacation at Tip-Top—a small Mom n' Pop resort—where, for five days, we played absentee from the rest of life and celebrated the final glorious days of summer.

One night, as lay my infant daughter back down to sleep following a midnight feeding, I pulled the sheets up around my neck and caught the gentle whiff of memory.

Without warning the face of my Grandma sprang up before my eyes, and I saw her brushing her fine silver hair with a comb in her bathroom. Brisk, swift strokes. I stood beside her, watching, my three-foot-tall self just visible in the bathroom mirror over the vanity. Whisk, whisk—she brushed, and the smell of her clean hair and clothes, her powder and lotion, laundry soap, and something else, the smell of my grandma, filled the air around me. Even as a child I loved breathing her in.

Smells were very much a part of my grandma's life—or at least my memory of her. She was an Avon Lady—I don't know that she ever sold the products, but she certainly purchased them. I remember the beautiful pressed and loose powder cases, tiny mirrors, various colors of lipstick, and wonderful face creams. These are some of her smells. She was an utterly meticulous woman. Her clothes were always beautifully pressed—even her underwear and her white, flour-sack dish towels. She was so meticulous about absolutely everything, that I can imagine having me underfoot was not always terribly easy for her—though she always seemed delighted to have me around, dirty skinned knees and all . . .

I have one particularly beautiful memory of time spent with her—one among dozens of memories—

I was very small. Probably no more than four or five. My Mom and sister and I were visiting Grandma at the Lake. It was summer time and my sister and I had spent all day playing in the water, until following supper, we were so happily exhausted that even bed seemed like a good idea (and this to a child!). I'd had a bath in Grandma's huge ugly brown tub. I had delightedly propelled my small naked body from one end of the tub to the other, on the slippery bottom once the water drained away. My hair was still wet, and it made the back of my nightgown damp. I was tucked into bed and Grandma had come to kiss me goodnight. As she bent over me and kissed my forehead pulling the sheets up around my neck, the smell of those sheets, and the smell of her washed over me in a glorious aroma of summertime, lake-water, fresh-cut grass, and Avon products in a combination that I am still searching for.

As I pulled the sheets up to my neck in the darkness of our little rented cabin, that smell washed over me—transported me—drawing my heart into my throat and tears to my eyes. My own childhood memories flooded around me in the warm summertime night, brushing against the memories my own children were making.

They will never know her as I did—my Grandma. But the smell of her lingers like a lost perfume in the most unexpected places.