Upon Smell¶
I could never truthfully say that I know well the scent of the canola flower. Nor can I ever speak of times where I have waded through a field of tallow blooms beneath pearly skies. But I have swung free-spirited and singing from my mother’s hand through a sun-drenched meadow, her perfume mingling with that of the lavender that kissed our bare skin and stained our toes.
I have been pulled through iron waves touched by the chill of winter, with seafoam sticking to my face, neck and chest as salt stung my lips and my mouth was filled with bring water, my father’s laughter making me warmer than any summer sun.
And my nose has been pressed to a lovers’ chest, his body’s stench like that of our love making tinged with the flavour of coconut surf wax and spilled wine.
Scents and fragrances leave their marks on all of us, tying our memories, inextricably, to a certain odour.
Bat for a whiff of coconut and I am again fourteen, in the arms of my first heart throb, feeling as infinite as the stars. A hint of the ocean’s tang and I am in the sea with my father conquering a life-long fear of waves and the tide. An encounter with the delicacy of jasmine sees me shrinking to doll-size and experiencing my first trip abroad, my mother like a pillar of safety amongst a riot of unfamiliar names, people and places.
The beauty of smell is that it has always been able to stimulate the minds capacity to remember and arouse in us excitement, delight, melancholy, joy, comfort and yes discomfort, too. Things best remembered come alongside things best forgotten as, unsought, a smell recalls them.
Now my mother’s perfume and my father’s cologne can reduce me to tears and fill me with longing. I bless those little sensing’s for they are like mana from heaven, keeping clear the image of home in a place so far from their embrace.
In this world so colourless and sanitised, I live, I breathe and I expire.
