Smell Memory: Burnt Toast and Musty Old Farm Houses

Patience's Hazel Art
(Hazel Grayson at 104 years old - 2004)

Smell Memory.  What is yours like?  Mine is haunting in the most beautiful way.

I walked into my kitchen just now to wash my breakfast dishes and change a load of laundry.  I was pondering if there is any gardening that I can go outside to do this beautiful summer day.  Lost in a mental list of productivity options, I was about three feet from the sink when a smell memory hit me and hit me hard.  I suddenly walked into a cloud of what my Grandma Grayson's kitchen used to smell like - a combination of old musty farm house and burnt toast.  I was taken.  I stopped abruptly, doubting what I was smelling.  Grabbing a hold of the counter as though I were going to lose my balance from surprise, I inhaled deeply as the smell memory grew stronger.  Eyes closed, the vision of my Grandmother became prominent standing in the kitchen of her old farm house (not the newly built modern house that my Grandfather gifted her in her late 80's).  Her cotton dress and apron, bowed legs from childhood illness, standing at the kitchen sink laughing as she washed the breakfast dishes.  I opened my eyes for a brief moment to set my own breakfast dishes down in my sink.  The smell still overwhelmingly present, I strong cry took me over.  I closed my eyes and deeply inhaled again as the smell memory faded.

I don't know if my own kitchen tends to smell like old musty farm house.  It is very possible that is smells like burnt toast - a lifelong way of living that I need to re-address very soon.  I won't linger too long as to why this happened, but I am thankful for it.

We can easily look at a photo and say, "Oh yeah!  I remember that!"  Or, we can recollect with a friend or a relative about a shared memory and our own personal version of the story.  We can touch a doll or a blanket or just about anything and feel the sensory touch of something that has always felt that way.  But smell is more elusive.  Yes, I can say, "This peach pie tastes just like Grandma used to make!"  The pie could even smell the same.  But to suddenly be hit with a smell that is unlikely to exist in your present environment...a smell that is a combination of elements from a time past...well that is something else altogether.

Has this happened to you?

My mother used to have this wooden cabinet with glass doors that she kept as a sort of shrine to my brother who passed in his teens.  It held his favorite Dallas Cowboys t-shirt, his left-handed baseball mitt, trophies, a picture of him in little league, candles and more.  If you opened the cabinet, you would be overwhelmed at the intimate smell of the items inside, most notably the candles.  But every once in a blue moon, on a different floor of the house or in a far away room, that combination of smells would waft under your nose.  Gripping you, stopping you in yours tracks, forcing you to close your eyes and wonder.  These smells were mysteriously free of their entombed moment in time - back in 1982.

Smells from my Grandma Hazel Grayson have haunted me before.  In fact, I cannot think of any smells relative to others that have ever grabbed me like that.  Mediums would tell you that it represents that individual's spirit is visiting you at that exact moment in time and that it is "with you", watching over you and protecting you.  Whereas, neuroscientists would indicate that this is olfactory memory, where one's amygdala specifically deals with smell memory.  

Whatever the case may be, I wonder why it doesn't happen for me with smells from anyone else.  Why only Hazel?  Why not my brother's smells to me like they do to my mother?  It both examples, the smell is not negative but, it seems, a warm reminder of a loved one passed.  For me specifically, a time and a place, an age and an environment - a person who greatly nurtured me.  

While it brought me tears, my memory of Grandma Hazel this morning warmed me.  It gave me her being again if only for a brief moment.  It brought me her love and her part in my daily morning traditions.  I was happy to see her again from my 7-year-old height, peering into the kitchen while standing in the living room entry.  With the morning sun shining in above her kitchen sink, she was everything I remembered and more.  

I was me.

Kicked, spattered, spanked

I smiled

Belittled, neglected, abused

I hoped

I was bartender

I was egg collector

I was calf feeder

Still I believed

I was 7

Little Red Riding Hood

Youngest of 3

1 dead

1 dead to be

I was Midwestern

Isolated, perfected, subjected

I cried

Dominated, berated, restricted

I tried

I was me.

Dione 04/24/2013 10:55AM

Wednesday is Today

The rain drove down at an angle, solid.  It has been pouring now for three days.  Bunny's ears were gone, no longer peaked in their playful alert way.  Detached from years of companionship.  Years of bringing Bunny along by hanging onto his ears.  Then that one painful moment of tearful tug-a-war induced by my brother.  The ears came off but Bunny was loved just the same.  Injured, yet loved.  Bunny was my guy.  Pink, green, yellow...all the colors of Easter drenched in finality.  The rebirth squandered, disregarded, tossed out.  As special as Sam Snake, who went early.  Went first. 

There bunny was.  Rain water atop kerosene.  Dirty.  Oily.  Abandoned.  Nose deep in the soot encrusted burn barrel.  An old barn-red barrel about 80 gallons large.  Solitary, it sits center yard under the sole yard light.  One light.  One light pole.  A singular patch of grass.  Barrel and Bunny.  Abandoned bunny.  Here since Sunday.  Wednesday is today. 

Sunday brought us to see my Grandma.  With Mommy half across the universe, I found comfort in Grandma.  Never cross.  Always shining happy and laughing.  A laugh that emanates through the years.  The smells of her and her kitchen haunt as they waft in smell memory.  A day spent with her, shared lovingly with my brother and resentfully with my step-siblings.  Often times we are forced to share our Grandmother Love with them.  Step-mom placed the love scale on the table and the mound of my Grandma's love was set in the tray, heaping and oozing over the sides.  It was weighed, measured.  Sliced and divied up.  With them.  They who spent time with their Grandparents without us.  They who got to see their Father every other weekend.  We who saw our Mom maybe twice a year now.

After a beautiful Sunday with Grandma, we come home in time for evening chores.  As Grandpa descends the driveway into the barnyard, he turns the circle around the pole.  Dad and Step-Mom are west of the house, just outside the porch door.  Burn barrel aflame, dolls crying, baby cribs shattered, children's games, stuffed animals distraught, various toys waiting their turn for the incinerator.  Sitting in line.  Sullen.  Defeated.  Neglected.  Abandoned.  In chains.

In this overcrowded house, this blended home make-up, there are rules.  Rules that must be abided by.  Disregarding rules can lead to the cruelest of punishment.  First, the outraged enforcer - an absolute anger-filled verbally abusive rampage of a temper tantrum, followed by a momentary pause, a deep breath, a rearing of the gargantuan hand and finished with the hit.  The shove.  The "Goddammit kid get your head outta your fucking ass before I pull it out for you!"  The "What the fuck were you thinking?!"  The "You dumb ass!" 

Younger years brought pants down, little bare bottomed girl laid sunny side up over his lap.  Open handed brute force spankings from 5-inch-wide hands.  Fingers like polish sausages.  Older years brought cowboys booted kicks to the ass while being escorted across the lawn to finish something I had forgotten to do from my daily list.  Brother endured worse.  Step-sister remained untouched.  Step-brother defenseless against the rage.  Two years old, carried down the stairs with a softened alarmed beast, the minute boy bore a bruised eye, rivers of tears and a pathetic summation, "I think we may have gotten a little carried away.  But we made up and we are buddies now." 

But today.  Today is Wednesday.  And Bunny gazes sullenly back at me.  Bunny says, "Don't cry.  You will be ok.  Your brother will protect you.  Don't worry about me.  Don't cry."  I stroke his cheek with my cow-feed encrusted cow-hide work gloves.

The simplest of rules meant that your bed had to be made every morning.  That there needed to be a clean floor in your bedroom.  The rules didn't account for your two-year-old step-brother who might be intrigued by your items, while you are at school, and leave them on the floor.

Bunny was last in line.  Once descended into the death chamber, Bunny was doused and lit aflame.  But the sprinkles turned into drops of rain falling on Bunny's face and ears if nothing else but to grant us a last good-bye.  But not a good-bye like this.  Not three days of torturous detainment.  From Sunday nights flames to thunderous rain.  Rain for three days.  Three days of waking to see Bunny sitting in the barrel. Three days of Bunny in the barrel when I get home from school, put on my coveralls and bring out the house trash to add to his grave.  Three days of walking around him, crying with him, talking to him, plotting to save him.  Three tedious days. 

Day four brought little rain and enough sunlight for the old man to give it another go.  Another gasoline drench and a toss of the match and WHOOSH!  Bunny is aflame.  Neglected.  Abandoned.  Abused.  Alone.  Aflame.