Smells and childhood memories
When I was little, my mother wore Joy perfume, which smelled like roses. She switched to another scent when I was older, and now my mom has been gone for several years. Yet whenever I smell Joy perfume, or even roses, I’m instantly back in my childhood. The smell of coffee takes me back to my grandmother’s house, where we woke up to the aroma of a fresh pot when we visited in the summer. What smells take you back to childhood?
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Mothballs! That smell takes me instantly back to my grandmother’s house.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I think the smell that takes me back to my childhood the most often is any school gym. For some reason, the smell is the same everywhere. Not just the expected gross sweaty socks smell, but something else. Something about the floor, and the bleachers - I’m not even sure what it is. But it’s always the same, and it always takes me back to being an awkward, nerdy kid.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:44 am
The scent of orange blossoms transports me instantly to my childhood years, growing up in the San Fernando Valley of the 1950’s/60’s. In those years, before houses were built everywhere, the air was filled with the rich perfume from the acres and acres of orange trees spread across the valley.
My paternal grandparents lived in Chatsworth on a big lot, and had a small orange grove (along with other fruit trees). I loved spending time there, “helping” my grandpa Andy with the orange trees. Citrus blossoms bring it all back so clearly!
Oh, and so does orange marmalade….. my Grandma Sallie made wonderful marmalade from their oranges, and served us sandwiches on her home baked bread, with fresh peanut butter and marmalade spread on it. Yummmmm!
and - remember Yardley’s Oh! de London perfume from the swinging 1960’s? That scent captures my teenage years… I bought a bottle of it on eBay a few years back and treasure it.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Make mine a Kielbasy sandwitch.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Ok here’s another one, the smell in a gym comes from the shellack that is painted on the floor.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I guess I forgot to submit my last comment, so I’ll try again.
A Kielbasy sandwitch and gyms smell that way because of the shellack applied to the floor.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:16 am
misskitty’s comment reminded me of another perfume smell that takes me back–Tabu. That one goes back to my teenage years, when I wanted to be exotic and mysterious. I still have a bottle in my dresser drawer and every once in a while will take it out for a sniff. I don’t wear it anymore, though, now that I’m all grown up.
February 26th, 2008 at 4:37 am
It’s funny…no matter how hard I think about it, I can’t recall any specific smell that defined my childhood years. It’s ironic actually because I think sense memory is the strongest trigger for my long ago reminiscences. Often times I’ll be riding in a car somewhere or out for a walk and something will hit me and it’s simply staggering how quickly I’m back in the moment. Things like that usually happen on the fly and cannot be easily recalled again. I guess it’s all about happening in the moment for me.
However, there is one exception to this phenomenon. A great deal of my childhood memories center around the pool in my grandparent’s backyard. It was very hard for me to lose that piece of myself when their house was sold. My cousin and I agreed that one day we will try to buy it again. I digress–having spent so much time there, the scent of the flowers growing on the bushes lining the pool are forever ingrained in my memory. I cannot tell you what they are called but I will always recognize them immediately by sight, but more so smell.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Okay, Maybe this is just the school I went to, BUT when we were in first and second grade and they would send home mimeographed notes to the parents we would always hold them up to our nose because we couldn’t read the words and say “It smells like shots!” which would terrify us. So I have a knee jerk reaction to mimeograph ink. On a much happier note, I’m sure many of you here also ate (or at least tasted) the school paste. Do you remember how it had a wintergreen smell? My Aunt had a vacation home by the beach, and there are 2 smells that take me back there in a second: Salt air and lavender bushes. Her yard had lavender instead of grass and after a day of the sun beating on it, and a breeze off of the ocean, God that’s heaven! I grew up inland, so for me the smell of Orange blossems and Eucalyptis bring me home. And finally, though I never wore it myself, I loved LOVE’S fresh lemon perfume. That will get you to chanting “Give peace a chance!”
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:15 am
tendoublee reminds me that of course! Mimeograph ink is a very strong childhood scent-memory. Kids today will never know that heady aroma. Orange blossoms are also strongly tied to my childhood because we used to walk through orange groves (although we weren’t supposed to - I think my mom thought bad guys were hiding in them) to get to school. Those groves are long gone, but the scent still reminds me of those walks.
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hey, tendoublee–if you grew up around orange blossoms and Eucalyptus you also remember the smell that came in summer and early fall–smog! Whenever we have a smoggy day, which thankfully is much less often than before, it triggers the memory of running around playing in the summer and spending the evening coughing from the air pollution. I hope that one day this smell won’t exist any more, or any where. That’s one childhood memory I can do without.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I lived not far from the sewage treatment plant when I was 5-6 years old. We could not open our windows in the summer when the air was humid and hot. 25 years later, I lived in a neighboring area, and the smell was just as bad.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I can remember the smell of the passaic river in the summer when there was little water there.
When I was 18 and in the army I can still remember the smell of gun powder since there were 100 targets and 100 soldiers firing at the targets so a lot of smoke was produced and of course the smell of cosmoline that had to be removed from the newly acquired Garnand M1 rifles to replace the springfied 1903’s that we used in 1938 and then of course there’s gasoline that now at $4,00 a galon is very expensive perfume.