“Childhood smells of perfume and brownies.”

Today is beautiful with no breeze and the brightest sun hanging in the sky. Fern is so relaxed lying in the sun shining through the front door that I had to check to make sure she was breathing. Gracie is outside sitting in the sun. She has a favorite spot on the back side of the yard where she sprawls on the grass. When she comes in to check on me, her fur will feel hot to the touch.

Yesterday I heard dogs barking, including my own, mowers and kids playing but not today. My neighborhood is Sunday quiet as if there was reverence still left for the day.

I have favorite smells. The every day favorite smells give me a sense of comfort and continuity like the smell of coffee brewing first thing in the morning or the smell of the ocean borne this far by the wind or the fog. Other smells transport me to different times and places. Last week I smelled leaves burning and saw a man tending his small fire, rake in hand. I slowed down and lowered my window when I went by him and his leaves. All of a sudden I was a little kid again watching my father tend to his fire burning on the street beside the sidewalk. The smell of wood burning brings me back to Ghana. During the harmattan, when the mornings are chilly, the family compound behind my house had smoke whirling into the air from fires lit to keep everyone warm. The smell of that burning wood was almost sweet as it filled the air. Food in Ghana is still cooked on small, round charcoal burners, and the charcoal is still made from wood. Last summer when I smelled the cooking fires I was transported forty years in time to when I lived in a small white duplex and behind my house was a field with a family compound. I can still see and smell the smoke from that compound as it rises into the air. My mother and the smell of sugar cookies baking are forever linked in my memory.

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”

Today feels as if I’m living in a new world. It is cool and pleasant with no humidity. Last night I didn’t even need the air-conditioner in my bedroom. The next few days will be the same. I’m thinking I’ll be living on the deck for a while, and I suspect tonight’s outside shower might be just a bit chilly.

We had our movie on the deck last night instead of Saturday. Continuing with our Boston film festival, it was The Departed. What was fun, and I’m not referring in any way to that movie, was recognizing scenes from our Boston movie tour last fall. The best one was where Matt Damon, after a rugby match, was sitting on a bench in the Common looking at the state house. In real life, a statue would have been in the way. That’s movie magic.

I’ve written the start of this paragraph three times and deleted each one. I just wasn’t interested in what I had to say. Twice I got up and did something in between. I cleaned the coffee pot and on my second run I moved around a few things I hide behind the TV set. One of those things was a diffuser, and it got me thinking about smells. I have a few favorites. Cookies baking is one of them. I think of my mother and sugar cookies and Christmas. She made them every year, even when we were adults. They were as much a part of Christmas as were our stockings. Turkey roasting is another smell I love. I can see my mother standing hunched over the turkey bulging out of its pan. It always just fit without any spare space. I remember the baster and how she’d use it to suck up the juice then baste all of the turkey. She used to steal a bit of the stuffing, the crusty part at the end. Burning wood is another favorite smell. It reminds me of Ghana. The Ghanaians used wood charcoal for cooking, and I could smell it all over town when I walked. At night, especially, the smell was pervasive. Women sitting along the side of the road cooked and sold food. I was a frequent visitor to the fried plantain aunty, a polite address for older Ghanaian women. From my deck, I can smell barbecue. It makes me want to invite myself to dinner. My dad is the one I associate with that smell.

If I get forgetful in my old age, I hope a smell will trigger a forgotten memory, especially a memory about someone I dearly loved.

 

“If things are getting easier, maybe you’re headed downhill.”

Today has exactly the same weather as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Poor Gracie goes out, tries to get comfy on the deck lounge but finds the breeze far too cold and comes back inside. She sits at the front door and lets the sun coming through warm her fur, and she watches the neighborhood but sees very little. When I’m done here, we’re going for a ride down cape. Maybe that will remove the ennui the weather is causing the both of us.

When I was a little kid, very little grossed me out. I’d see classmates picking their noses and checking out their finds, but I won’t even describe but some them did with their bounties. Once in a while someone would get sick in class, and it was an event to be described over and over at recess. As I grew older, though, my tolerance for the gross disappeared. I’d get car sick on even short trips. At dinner once, someone’s milk got spilled into a plate of spaghetti, and that sent me running to the bathroom. It was Ghana which finally cured me.

I remember going into a market for the first time. The stalls in front sold goat patties for fuel and they didn’t smell all that great. I ran outside to be sick. I was embarrassed, but I was stuck with a sensitive stomach. That lasted about two more weeks. I stopped noticing the smells. Some, like wood charcoal burning, became a favorite smell, a sweet one which still never fails to bring me back to Ghana. Public toilets, here a term loosely used, could be smelled blocks away. My neighbors in the field behind my house squatted in the millet adding their own fertilizer. I learned to aim perfectly at the hole in the public toilet and to squat when forced by necessity. When I visited Morocco, my skill returned quickly. I figured it was like riding a bike, something you just don’t forget.

I am going to Ghana in late August. I have the dates and am hunting for a flight which won’t exhaust my bank account. I figure it might take me a day or two to get acclimatized to those smells I remember. The one thing I know is my aim is still good.