Scent

A song can bring back a summer. A photograph can return a face to us, along with the small details we have begun to forget. There are many ways for the past to find its way into an ordinary day. Yet I have always felt that scent carries something especially intimate. Sometimes, before I can even name what is familiar, I feel myself settling into a moment I thought I had forgotten.

It is difficult to describe how complete that feeling can be. The air seems to have a temperature again. There is a certain light, a familiar distance between myself and everything around me. For a few seconds, I can almost feel how slowly the day is passing.

The Longan Tree

I think of the longan tree in front of the house.

When it flowered, its fragrance drifted quietly into the rooms. It was faint enough to live alongside without paying much attention to it, mingling with the air through an open door or reaching me while I sat near a window. I could spend an entire afternoon there and never think to call it beautiful. It was simply how that part of the year smelled.

Remembering it now, I find myself trying to recover the hours around it: the shade in front of the house, the heat beyond it, the comfortable feeling that there was still plenty of time before anyone would call me inside. So much of childhood must have passed like that, surrounded by things I assumed would always be there.

Close to Her

Then there is the smell I associate with my grandmother.

The medicated oil she used for her aches had become part of her clothes, lingering in the fabric and close to her skin. Sharp and warm, it was there when I sat beside her, or leaned against her, or came close enough to catch it as she moved. I knew that smell long before I had any understanding of the pains that made her reach for the bottle.

To me, it belonged to her as naturally as her voice did. Even now, something similar can make me turn my head before I have time to think. For a brief, unguarded moment, the distance between us feels much smaller.

Before the Rain

And there was the smell of earth before rain.

The wind would change while the ground was still dry. From somewhere beyond the house came that cool, earthy scent, and everyone seemed to know what it meant. Clothes had to be brought in. Windows needed closing. Outside, the leaves stirred, showing their pale undersides.

There was a small pleasure in those hurried preparations. I could stand at the doorway and watch the first drops darken the ground, feeling the air cool against my face. For a while, there was nowhere else I needed to be.

The Old Kitchen

Eventually, all these memories lead me back to the kitchen in the old house.

By evening, the smell of cooking would have reached the other rooms. Rice steaming, something frying, the familiar warmth of a meal almost ready. I might have been occupied with something I considered more important, reluctant to stop when I was called. The food would be there. The people would be there. There would be another evening much like this one.

I wish I could remember those meals more precisely. What we ate, what we talked about, where everyone sat. Some of it has blurred together.

A Way Back

I rarely think of those days in any particular order. They return in pieces, often while I am somewhere else entirely. A flowering tree on an unfamiliar street. A bottle of medicated oil opened nearby. Rain approaching a place I have never been before.

And every so often, a smell from someone else’s kitchen reaches me, and I find myself expecting to hear my name.

For a moment, I remember exactly how it felt to be called home for dinner.