Comforting Smells

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I'm not surprised that the most memorable sense is smell; there are certain scents, where as soon as I smell them, I'm taken down memory lane. A specific kind of soap immediately reminds of my pediatrician's office, and a certain cologne reminds me of warm summer days with an old friend. 

While Ackerman describes smell as something constant, a sense that is stimulated every time you breathe, I've never really thought of it that way. My sense of smell is not exactly strong, so when I'm not actively smelling something, it's often like I'm not smelling anything at all. Obviously, we all go noseblind to things when we're in the same environment for a long enough period of time, but there will be times when I have to double check that I can still smell things because either I've gone noseblind to the scent of wherever I am, or the scent is so neutral that I just don't notice it. The paranoia of covid has also made this something I do pretty often. 

It's hard to imagine a life where I have no sense of smell even if I do end up checking to make sure I can still smell, all the time. I find extreme comfort in a number of different smells, so the idea of anosmia is really scary to me. It would be kind of boring to live a life where I don't get to experience different smells, good or bad; it would be sad to no longer be able to smell the scents that bring me comfort. The smell of lavender is calming to me because I used to have a stuffed animal with a lavender scented heating pad inside and the aforementioned cologne is comforting because the memories associated with it are. 

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausFebruary 8, 2022 at 7:38 AM

    I find so much of what you say here quite resonant (to use a sound metaphor for smell!) I like the term you used - "noseblind" - another thought-provoking mixed sensory metaphor. I also like how you can be self-conscious and intentional about choosing to smell things that you know will give you comforting memories.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marissa KanakryMarch 29, 2022 at 9:15 AM


    Something else that your post made me think about is how wearing masks has kind of forced us to go "noseblind," as you put it. I feel like masks have "masked" our potential to constantly smell!

    ReplyDelete

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