The wonderful joy of family and our memories

A young adult grandson just flew home to Minneapolis. He left in a swirl of inviting cologne he sprayed like a cloud around himself. Syringa bushes — Idaho's state flower — are in bloom, adding sweetness to the air. We've moved beyond lilacs and wild roses — both so fragrant I'm glad their flowering is staggered so as not to compete. Now are the warm woods — pine needles baking on the ground — wafting their rich aroma.

My Pens and Friends writing community recently wrote about scent associations. I created some vignettes around memorable fragrances titled “Ascent.” I'd like to encourage a pause in life's daily march to appreciate the smells that invite us to celebrate or give thanks or fondly recall. Not every scent fits this parameter — but plenty do.

“I'm always confusing them — is it Brut or Old Spice?

I hug his neck — freckled skin, creased with time.

His rust beard gone white — his height condensed by years.

But he smells the same as that man I married in the A-frame church on the shores of Priest Lake.

It doesn't matter whether Brut or Old Spice.

He wears a scent called Reassurance.”

“Alaska in the autumn smells like wet birch leaves flattened in the moist earth — yellow hearts fluttered to the ground.

The chainsaw rips through felled logs — and the woods fill with the fragrance of trees cut open — the pitch-perfect perfume of life.

Those same logs split into firewood — crackling in the wood stove — exhale another perfume.

I sniff their wispy gray breath, and know that I love both their living and their dying.”

“Rolls — dough left to rise, freshly kneaded, floury balls dropped in glass pans — bake in the oven.

Their aroma protests confinement in such small space.

It escapes — floats through the house.

A welcome waft in our home — I do not bake bread.

But my friend does. I moved next door when we were in first grade.

She made these rolls from his mother's handwritten recipe her husband carried into war in Vietnam.

She baked them for me on her visit from Tucson.

We are celebrating sixty-five years of friendship.

No wonder their aroma reaches beyond the oven.”

“In wonder I smell his newborn head — my son who does not yet have a name.

He smells so sweet I tell the nurse.

What did you rub on him?

She smiles — nothing, she says.

I understand it is his own untouched birth scent.

I cannot get enough of this sweetness who will become Philip.”

Smell can be easily ignored or great appreciated. Nose memory is an album all itself.