kitchen counter with a cookbook and a knife and my cane balanced against the counter a week after I began to walk. The pain had receded, and I hardly thought twice when I moved back and forth from the stove.
I had been helping to cook dinner for my mother and Charley every night, happy to do something productive even if the results were at times bland. On this night we planned to roast a leg of lamb, which sat fleshy and fine in the fridge. I laid a thick bundle of fresh rosemary on a cutting board before me. I would pluck the pointed leaves, just as I had done nightly for Maws, and then chop them in order to flavor the marinade for the meat. I moved along in my work, pluck pluck pluck , chop chop chop, my knife rapid against herb and wood. I let my mind wander. I thought about culinary school, about Alex, about the memoir I had begun to read that morning, one about a woman in New York who cooked her way through every recipe in Julia Child’s first book. And then suddenly I stopped. I breathed in and out, slowly. There was something in the air. Something different. Something surprising and strange, something I couldn’t quite process, like I had entered a waking dream.
There was a smell.
Inhale.
Exhale.
It was there. Definitely something there.
Inhale.
Exhale.
This scent was light but undeniable. It entered my nose with purpose on each breath. It was shocking, like a burst of neon light in a landscape of black and white, and I stood there silently, unsure of what to do.
Could I be hallucinating?
Inhale.
Exhale.
It was still there, smelling of the woods. Of the ground. Of the earth. It smelled dark. A dark forest green. It smelled wonderful.
I looked down at my hands, which still held a knife in one and a bundle of herbs in the other. Of course. This was a scent, a real scent, the scent of rosemary. I leaned down over the cutting board and sucked in air slowly again through my nostrils. The aroma saturated my nose, and for a moment I could hardly breathe. I felt assaulted. Surprised and overwhelmed.
“I can smell this,” I said.
I looked around. There was no one in the room but me.
“I can SMELL this,” I said, louder.
I inhaled and exhaled again. It was still there. I could smell it!
It was pungent, rich and warm. Like a friend I hadn’t seen in years, this scent rang simultaneously familiar and strange. It tingled with possibility. I closed my eyes and breathed in again.
There it was. There what was? A thought? A memory? The aroma took me somewhere—somewhere as immediate as the sound of knife on herb. It took me back to my childhood: to a family vacation in Colorado, when I rode a horse for the first time on a trail littered in rosemary bush.
I put my hands to my face again and again. I could smell it there the entire night. The lingering scent on my fingertips gave me goose bumps of pleasure. It reminded me of my family, of my past. It reminded me of the freedom of summer and the breath of vacation. It reminded me of James Bond.
WHY? WHY DID rosemary send me immediately back to that horse ride in Colorado? Why did salsa take me viscerally back to those Sunday evenings with my father when I smelled it before the accident? Why did the scent of sawdust ignite a memory of a rodeo out west and whiffs of cinnamon gum on a friend’s exhale a middle-school crush?
It is not all romance and English literature. It is grounded in science as well.
The perception of smell is directly linked to the amygdala and to the hippocampus, located in the medial temporal lobes of the brain. They are both considered gateways to the limbic system, which processes long-term memory, emotion, and behavior. Although hearing, vision, taste, and touch likewise provide input, olfaction is the only sense so intimately and immediately routed throughout. No wonder, then, that smells “detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences,” as Diane Ackerman writes in
I had been helping to cook dinner for my mother and Charley every night, happy to do something productive even if the results were at times bland. On this night we planned to roast a leg of lamb, which sat fleshy and fine in the fridge. I laid a thick bundle of fresh rosemary on a cutting board before me. I would pluck the pointed leaves, just as I had done nightly for Maws, and then chop them in order to flavor the marinade for the meat. I moved along in my work, pluck pluck pluck , chop chop chop, my knife rapid against herb and wood. I let my mind wander. I thought about culinary school, about Alex, about the memoir I had begun to read that morning, one about a woman in New York who cooked her way through every recipe in Julia Child’s first book. And then suddenly I stopped. I breathed in and out, slowly. There was something in the air. Something different. Something surprising and strange, something I couldn’t quite process, like I had entered a waking dream.
There was a smell.
Inhale.
Exhale.
It was there. Definitely something there.
Inhale.
Exhale.
This scent was light but undeniable. It entered my nose with purpose on each breath. It was shocking, like a burst of neon light in a landscape of black and white, and I stood there silently, unsure of what to do.
Could I be hallucinating?
Inhale.
Exhale.
It was still there, smelling of the woods. Of the ground. Of the earth. It smelled dark. A dark forest green. It smelled wonderful.
I looked down at my hands, which still held a knife in one and a bundle of herbs in the other. Of course. This was a scent, a real scent, the scent of rosemary. I leaned down over the cutting board and sucked in air slowly again through my nostrils. The aroma saturated my nose, and for a moment I could hardly breathe. I felt assaulted. Surprised and overwhelmed.
“I can smell this,” I said.
I looked around. There was no one in the room but me.
“I can SMELL this,” I said, louder.
I inhaled and exhaled again. It was still there. I could smell it!
It was pungent, rich and warm. Like a friend I hadn’t seen in years, this scent rang simultaneously familiar and strange. It tingled with possibility. I closed my eyes and breathed in again.
There it was. There what was? A thought? A memory? The aroma took me somewhere—somewhere as immediate as the sound of knife on herb. It took me back to my childhood: to a family vacation in Colorado, when I rode a horse for the first time on a trail littered in rosemary bush.
I put my hands to my face again and again. I could smell it there the entire night. The lingering scent on my fingertips gave me goose bumps of pleasure. It reminded me of my family, of my past. It reminded me of the freedom of summer and the breath of vacation. It reminded me of James Bond.
WHY? WHY DID rosemary send me immediately back to that horse ride in Colorado? Why did salsa take me viscerally back to those Sunday evenings with my father when I smelled it before the accident? Why did the scent of sawdust ignite a memory of a rodeo out west and whiffs of cinnamon gum on a friend’s exhale a middle-school crush?
It is not all romance and English literature. It is grounded in science as well.
The perception of smell is directly linked to the amygdala and to the hippocampus, located in the medial temporal lobes of the brain. They are both considered gateways to the limbic system, which processes long-term memory, emotion, and behavior. Although hearing, vision, taste, and touch likewise provide input, olfaction is the only sense so intimately and immediately routed throughout. No wonder, then, that smells “detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences,” as Diane Ackerman writes in
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