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.  

What May Day means to me.

When I was a child, I would visit my Grandmother Hazel Grayson often.  As my parents had been divorced and my Mom moved to California, Grandma Hazel stepped up to mother me as much as possible.  We did so many things together that I would consider "womanly".  This woman (then in her 70's/80's) taught me to bake, to enjoy the fruits of such baking efforts, to embrace family, holidays and culture.  Every year she would have me over to bake sizable amounts of Christmas cookies and holiday pies and cakes.  She also had me over for May Day.  And when I would arrive, I would find a small homemade basket (decorated in spring colors of green, pink, purple, light blue and yellow) hanging from something or sitting on the kitchen table waiting for me.

Grandma Hazel would get so excited and happy to see my reaction to this candy filled treat. She would laugh and giggle. This memory still warms me.

As I explored and savored the candies I found inside the basket, she would tell of times throughout her childhood where the neighborhood kids would all get together to celebrate the day.  They would meet at a park or on one of the farms where there would be dancing around a May pole, fun and feasting.  She said that if you were liked by a boy, he would hang a May basket on your door knob, ring the bell or knock on the door and then run away to hide so he could watch you from afar as you came out only to find the spring treat and wonder who left it for you.  She said that this also was something that friends would do for one another as an expression of their friendship.

I never experienced May Day like this with anyone but my Grandmother.  I found it to be a wonderfully warm expression of her love for me and my brother.  And, when my Mom was still living with us in South Dakota, Grandma Hazel would help us create May baskets for her.

Somehow, in my life in California, this tradition has slipped from my grasp.  I have not necessarily passed it on to my own daughter.  I do hope that I remember to pass it on to my Grandchildren.  In the meantime, every single May Day that comes to me reminds me of my Grandmother Hazel's loving kindness.  And that tradition -- of passing on loving kindness -- is what matters to me most.