Does the sight of lilacs call their scent to mind? Usually it works the other way, and scent pulls us back into memory, delivering us in an instant to a time and place that we didn’t even know we could recall.
When has a scent brought back a powerful memory?
This week there is one scent that fills the air in our neighborhood. It comes from a shrub that blossoms with tiny white flowers. These shrubs are in every fourth or fifth yard, but their sweetness envelopes everything. I wish I knew the name of this shrub; alas, I don’t. It reminds me of my Grandmother’s house in the 1950s and it bring back memories of playing with the other kids on the block. Once, a gold Breck Shampoo box served as the main feature of the control panel for our space ship as we flew to Mars, just like the character played by Buster Crabbe in the Saturday serial at the movies.
The smell of horse apples reminds me of going to see a neighbor’s horses and dogs when I was 12.