I was in a department store today and a woman walked by wearing Chanel No. 5; it’s what my mother used to wear, and the scent brought me right back to childhood. It made me think about my memories of scent as a child, some good and some bad.
Wonderful smells from childhood:
- carambola fruit from the neighbor’s tree (aka star fruit)
- the wonderful scent of gardenias in a neighbor’s yard on the way to school.
- cookies baking in the oven at Christmas time
- Tabu, a perfume one of the sophisticated older girls wore in high school
- Shalimar, a perfume grandmother wore
- chicken being fried for dinner
- the smell of the ocean and the beach
- the pages of a new Scholastic paperback
- the smell of freshly mimeographed worksheets with purple ink in school (yes, I’m THAT old!)
- turkey roasting in the oven
- pipe tobacco in my grandparents’ living room
- ripe mangos from our tree
- my dad’s photography developing chemicals
Not-so-nice smells:
- melaleuca trees in bloom (I can’t belive people use parts of this stinky tree in cosmetics under the pseudonym tea tree oil.)
- rotting citrus fruits in the neighborhood
- cloyingly sweet pink Avon rose perfume creme
- mothballs (I still feel sick when I smell this vile stuff.)
- my grandparents musty basement
- phisoHex soap
- mercurochrome
What were the memorable smells of your childhood?
