The scent of lavender = my great grandmother. (Everyone called her Grandma Great.)
Isn’t it weird how a certain smell connects you to the past
so immediately?
Lavender entered my life one year at the San
Diego County Fair.
I was young.... following Grandma Great around as she wove through areas that had
little interest to me, baked goods, jams and jellies, sewn items, plants… but then… a booth selling sachets. It smelled soooo good! There were all kinds of dried herbs and
flowers (and who knows what) that you could purchase to put into a little
rattan container. She chose
lavender.
I’m not sure if we only did this one year. It feels like we did it EVERY year of my
childhood. Grandma Great died when I was 19, but I think of her often… and
especially every time I smell lavender.
Whenever I buy something with a choice of scent I choose lavender. I have lavender scented lotion, body oil,
candles, and incense. I have a small
bottle of lavender essential oil sitting on my desk. Sometimes I dab it onto my wrists and behind my ears. I know that it is naturally relaxing, but it’s
more than that for me, it’s my Grandma Great and all the good memories of her
in my childhood.
It’s sort of mysterious how your nose is connected to the
memory part of your brain, isn’t it? I
know there are probably physiological explanations, but I don’t need to know
them. I just think it’s kind of a nice miracle
how one little scent can immediately flood me with good feeling. I was going to say “memories” but it’s not
just that, it’s more of a whole body/soul feeling. A good one.
Why did my brain
connect to this one smell from all the time I spend with Grandma Great? She was a huge part of my childhood. I’m sure there were many other smells. In fact, she cooked breakfast on a wood
burning stove every morning when we spent summers in her cabin in Montana.
But the smell of burning wood or baking biscuits, or frying trout doesn’t
bring her back, only lavender.
One of my sons has told me more than once how the smell of
burning wood takes him back to the comfort of laying on the floor by our wood
burning stove when he was young. He says
every time he smells wood burning he feels it, and it feels “good”. I can
relate to that because of the lavender.
I wonder if my other kids have “special smells” that I may
have unwittingly given them.
(Hey kids.. check in)
Do YOU have a special smell?
(1953) Lydia Frances Miller, "Grandma Great" 1888-1971 |