<p>I never read Proust, but as I get older, I find myself suddenly smelling a smell, or hearing a sound, that instantly transports me to the world as it was lived by my younger self.</p>
<p>Mine (so far) is: that smell of wet pavement when the snows recede. And there are new cracks in the sidewalk from the upheaval that cold severe weather can bring, and the sidewalk has that smell – like winter’s still here, but Spring is coming. I tried to describe it to S’14 when he was young. He said: do you smell it now? I said no – but I used to be closer to the pavement. </p>
<p>A sound – crickets outside, at night, heard through a window – to me, it sounds like vacation. Either they were louder, or us kids got to roam at night and hear them, or we weren’t inside, with the TV on.</p>
<p>The sound of traffic through the open window at night. Reminds me of a road trip I made to Florida with my family when I was six and we stopped at some roadside motel near the highway. This was way before AC so we slept with the windows open.</p>
<p>Mine is a rain smell as well. I spent my early childhood in a dry climate and you could smell a thunderstorm long before you could see or hear it. Probably some combination of dust and humidity makes that wonderful “rain is coming” smell. You don’t smell it in rainy climates like Seattle, but can on the dry side of the state. I remember being in a basement classroom in college and telling the person next to me that it was raining outside because I could smell it. He looked at me like I was crazy. Class ended and we walked out into a sudden strong rain. We do smell it here in Texas.<br>
Never thought about it before but there may be an evolutionary thing going on with smelling rain coming, or the approach of spring.</p>
<p>^^^Yes! The smell of rain in the desert. I grew up in AZ and there’s a wonderful distinct smell of rain. Maybe so distinct because it is so rare. You definitely don’t get that “smell” in wetter climates! (I miss it).</p>
<p>Spent my childhood in AZ as well. Some of it is the smell of the creosote bushes, and other desert plants. Yes, it is lovely. A few years back I was there when the citrus was blooming, and is THAT ever evocative.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is the oddest smells. I walk down to my midwestern basement and occasionally get a whiff of my childhood, when visiting my grandmother. Or a diesel bus passes, and I’m returned to Hong Kong.</p>
<p>The first is that slightly sulfuric smell of sewer gasses. It takes me straight back to Hargeisa, Somalia. Where I lived in 4th and 5th grade - it was probably our family’s favorite foreign service posting, but conditions were pretty spartan. There was almost no rainfall so we used to play in the backyard with the gray water from the kitchen. We spent hours play “mud roads” with Matchbox cars all made with that water. Our vegetable garden was watered from it. That faint whiff brings me back to those days every time.</p>
<p>I remember the smell of rain too. There were two short rainy seasons in Hargeisa, and when one began it was such an event we’d all get let out of school to dance in the rain.</p>
<p>The other smell that I (and my younger son) talk about frequently is the smell of unfinished wood. Whenever we go to our cabin in Vermont the first thing I do is take a big deep breath of that air. I love it. I get it other places, including our rather damp and underused garage, but it’s best there.</p>
<p>Betadine or Hibiclens.
Our oldest daughter was born ten weeks early and before & after visiting her in her isolation room in the NICU we had to scrub our forearms and hands. So multiple times a day for eight weeks. That smell got pretty embedded.</p>
<p>Creosote. Soaked into the floor of the Seattle REI before the latest building.</p>
<p>Bayberry candles immediately make me nauseous. My first pregnancy’s morning sickness hit in early December and I had decorated with a scented candle. The candle itself didn’t trigger it at the time but now 27 years later just a whiff of that smell makes me queasy.</p>
<p>The sound of grass being mowed; takes me back to summer days in my youth when I would like on my bed with a good book, bedroom window open and net curtain fluttering in the gentle cooling wind…really calming for me.</p>
<p>Very dark rainy days. I remember being in elementary school (grade 1 or 2–before my family moved from Michigan) and sitting at my desk, looking out the window to my left at the bad weather and feeling very cozy and warm and light inside the classroom.</p>
<p>snow…
lifting your face to huge snowflakes drifting down…
streetlights and moonlight glinting off snow crystals like diamonds at night…
the hush of a snow-covered world in the morning after a heavy snowfall…</p>
<p>Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?
(Where are the snows of yesteryear?)</p>
<p>Sometimes when I am in the car and a song comes on the radio - last time it happened it was a Jefferson Airplane song - completely threw me back in my teenage hood. At first it was fun and uplifting, then reality hit and I began to cry, so much of my life is gone.</p>