You guys, I'm already behind. This is so sad.
Ok, so I am officially starting the 30 days of prompts. Prompt #1 was to post a picture of something I ate today...or, in this scenario, something I ate yesterday. That is the world's stupidest prompt and since facebook is already swamped in food selfies, I refuse. Also, I ate very little yesterday and have pictures of none of it. So I shall instead write about...
Day 1 [as suggested by Kara]: my most poignant/evocative smell
I've never really considered my sense of smell to be terribly keen, to be honest. But I can tell you that there were two smells that instantly came to mind when Kara gave me this prompt, and they both come from my grandparents' old place in New Mexico.
The first is the smell of my grandma's food room. Imagine a dark, mysterious room out in the barn that you've only ever been inside a few times. In my memory it was lit with a single low-wattage bulb, giving me only partial view of lines and lines of jars from ceiling to floor. Those jars held magical things like canned peaches and pears and cherries and surely many many others though I have no idea, now, precisely what. We lived in New Mexico, but that room was always cool, no matter how hot it was. I'm realizing now, thinking back on it, that she must have packed oodles of insulation on the walls, which would explain why I remember the door being so thick, like the door to a vault. Somehow it smelled cool in there. I don't know how. But it was the smell of cool, just ever so slightly damp soil, mixed with glass, and a hint of dust. As a child it was purely exciting to me, signaling my presence in a room as mysterious and promising as Lucy's wardrobe must have felt. Now that I'm an adult, I still get that same feeling of expectant excitement, as though I can find a treasure if I explore long enough, but I also feel utterly comforted and at home. I judge all food rooms based on the presence or lack of that smell. My mom's food room in Union has it. The last time I was in my aunt Marge's it also had it. Those are the only other places I have found it. But it makes them two of my favorite places in the world.
As for the second smell...let me tell you a story. Perhaps the most revolting of all of my habits as a wee toddler was the intense joy I had in sucking on my grandpa's watch. Mind you, my grandfather's primary business, as I remember it, was selling bolts and nuts, and his spare time was devoted to manly tasks like clearing land or simply washing his hands with grease and machine oil. Thus, his watch was absolutely caked in years of collected oil, dirt, and other grime. Sitting on his lap and sucking on that disgusting watch I apparently absorbed, all unknowing, the scent of machine oil straight into my amygdala where it lurked in secret till last year, when Caleb bought his CnC mill. He put it in his garage, where it sat for a day or two seeping the smell of machine oil into the entire room. I opened the door and it was as though I was walking into a hug from my grandpa. I literally stood in the doorway inhaling deep breaths for minutes. It smells a little bit like gasoline mixed with dirt.
Thusfar, those are the two smells that have had the most profound visceral effect on my memory. Interesting that they both are related to my grandparents, and I described both as reminding me of dirt. I don't know what that means.
Coming up next time (later today) is prompt #2: Post a picture of yourself and describe your day (seriously, who is writing these???)
i know the smell of cool very well. our "fruitroom" had it and now the "walk-in" has it. smells dank, like cold dirt.
ReplyDeleteand i particularly liked the line about walking into a hug from your grandpa.