Smelling Memories

Isn’t it amazing how the sense of smell can be associated with a memory?  You can be walking somewhere and suddenly you come across a familiar smell in the air, you almost stop in your tracks, and you are simultaneously transported back in time reliving that memory associated with that specific scent.  It’s amazing!  So without getting into the scientific reasoning behind smells and memories, I will just say this…our brain is linked to our olfactory system which allows our brain’s limbic system, sometimes called the “emotional brain”, to trigger a response and recall memories when encountering a familiar scent.  This has happened to me many times and actually most recently when smelling TIDE laundry detergent, my favorite!  I know, strange, right?  Well, here’s the story…

When my husband and I moved overseas, we brought some American products with us, but not many.  So when we started our first load of laundry with a local Malaysian laundry detergent, we both realized that we missed the smell of our laundry from back home.  We decided to adapt to the change and not complain.  But after a conversation with my parents one day, they decided to run out to the store and buy us the biggest box of TIDE detergent they could find and ship it to us all the way in Malaysia!  After 2 months, we received it and have been slowly using this box ever since.  But last week, we realized that we have been getting down to the very bottom of our box and needed to figure out what we were going to do next.  Then a miracle, ha!  I saw an ad in a local newsletter from an American that had brought SIX BOXES of TIDE with them from the States and was unable to use it in their new washing machine.  They were selling it!  I immediately answered the ad and today picked up my SIX new boxes of TIDE!  I got home from work, opened the box and suddenly the smell began to bring back all the memories from home and doing laundry with my mom when I was a little girl.  It may sound silly but having little things that remind me of home, does helps with the homesickness.  There’s nothing like cuddling up in your favorite sweatshirt on the couch, taking a deep breath and smelling a familiar scent from home.  So now with my six new boxes of TIDE, I feel comfort knowing that they will last me until I get home again.

“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls bearing resiliently on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence.” – Marcel Proust, “Remembrance of Things Past”