The Nose Knows

INGRID THOFT

The other night I was cooking chicken stir-fry with a sweet and sour sauce when I was hit with a wave of nostalgia.  I flash backed to the months I lived in London a couple of years after graduating from college and the small kitchen in the basement-level flat.  What brought me back?  The scent of the sweet and sour sauce smelled like a Tesco meal I often heated up in that little flat.  Twenty-three years later and almost 5,000 miles away, I was right back there, prepping my meal before plopping down in front of the telly.

It's believed that scent triggers memory more than any of the other senses, but it's still amazing, and even a little jarring, when it does.  My dinner prep prompted me to react on other scents that have hit  my olfactory bulb and lit up my amygdala and hippocampus. 

Palmolive dish washing liquid reminds me of my paternal grandmother's kitchen in Montana.  I can never quite believe this because I was only in that kitchen a handful of times in my childhood.  The formula has changed over the years, and the memory is not as strong, but the memory of that initial scent recognition remains with me to this day.

Oil of Olay:  Yes, I know it's Olay now, but when I first smelled it on my mom, Oil was part of the name.  A couple of months ago, I was staying with my aunt, and she happened to walk by the open bathroom while I was applying Olay.  She stopped and came back to the doorway to ask if I was using Oil of Olay.  In turns out that her mother used the lotion, too, (is there anyone who hasn't) and catching the scent on the air brought her mother back to her.

When my husband and I go for walks along Puget Sound, the briny smell of the sea instantly transports me to my hometown, Marblehead, MA on the opposite side of the country.  The tang of salty air is so intertwined with my childhood, I can't imagine one without the other.

What about you?  What scents live in your memory?