My friend Judi and I are reading Younger by the Day by Victoria Moran.) It’s a compendium of 365 daily suggestions to make one feel youthful, regardless of one’s age. Yesterday’s suggestion was about the power of scent and how it can take us back to times past, people remembered, situations that were special. The daily admonition was to take time to smell things . . . not just the roses, but everything.
So today I started smelling, and it was a revealing activity. I woke to the scent of Earl’s mild coffee as he placed a mug of it on my nightstand. It’s my daily alarm, as he knows I’m not a morning person and he tries to make waking as pleasant as possible. Sometimes it actually works.
Next, I smelled the various lotions I apply to my body parts. Then I smelled the orange juice that accompanied my vitamins on their journey to my stomach. I can’t say any of this was very exciting. In fact, it took the scent of roses on my way to the health club to reinvigorate me.
This year, my garden’s roses are amazing, and I plan to revel in every single one. I plan to sniff the peonies one more time before they fade, and I hope to remember to step outside when our lawn mower man comes each week so I can smell the scent of newly mown grass.
The health club itself has its own smell, and it isn’t the odor of perspiration. Rather, the club is located near a factory and it emits the scent of burning marshmallows — really burning marshmallows — much of the time. I’ve wondered what it actually is, but I’ll probably never find out.
I’m reminded that, years ago when my two sons were little, I used to wear Shalimar as a perfume. Then I didn’t wear it for quite some time. But when I rediscovered the scent and began applying it once again to my ear lobes, both of my sons on separate occasions remarked that I smelled like they remembered I did in their youth. That’s the best testimony to the power of scent that I can ever find.
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