Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. –Diane Ackerman, "A Natural History of the Senses"
If I had to choose flowers to serve as markers of my childhood, they would be bleeding hearts and lily of the valley, two fragile flowers of early spring. When I was younger, our patch of lily of the valley was larger than my kiddie pool and nestled in the shade behind the lilac bush. It has gradually thinned, but those small white flowers still feel and smell like home to me.
I've been trying for a long time to figure out what sort of perfume I would want. It seems like a facet of the adult personality. When I think of each of my parents and grandparents, I recall their cologne, the way the scent changes over the course of the day. The way it hits me when they first leave their bedrooms after applying it. I wonder what the memory of me will smell like.
Lily, like the earliest memories of childhood, is one of the hardest fragrances to recreate. Smell scientists struggle with the fragility, the particular freshness. (It's a fascinating business that Ackerman explores in her book. While the whole thing is exhausting, the portion on smell, which she refers to as "liquid memory," was delightful. You can read it here.)
In case you're interested, Christian Dior's Diorissimo is the "gold standard" of lily fragrance. I like the idea of this–the memory of me being a scent that holds so many memories of me.
Now, the scent of lilies has taken on an additional meaning for me: the smell of May Day, the rest of the world's version of Labor Day, which the U.S. ditched as a holiday due to its seemingly union-focused and socialist ideals. May Day, or the "Fête du Travail" in France, is a national holiday with a fun tradition.
The streets are filled with merchants holding small bundles of lily of the valley, which they are able to sell tax-free and without a vendor's license. The "mugeut des bois" (also the name of a fragrance that smells like–you guessed it–lily of the valley) are purchased and given to loved ones during the week of May Day to show appreciation for their hard work. You can learn more about May Day and lily of the valley here or (more cynically and sarcastically) here.
Now that May Day has passed, I'm filling the apartment with other scent memories in anticipation of my friend's arrival. (She's sitting in the Chicago airport at this moment.) We got a new gingerbread candle to make it smell like I've just baked (instead of burnt) something–handy when the oven is on and you're using those silicone baking things. Gross.
I also was able to pick instead of buy a bouquet of fresh flowers for the kitchen table. Lauren, my dear American friend sharing this adventure, lives in an apartment in the lower level of a house with a rambling garden–herbs, fruit trees, vegetables, more rhubarb than my entire hometown could consume. And roses. Roses that look exactly like the climbing, ambling bush outside my parents' bedroom window; roses a deep crimson that are so packed with petals they seem to stay fresh for ages. Roses that smell like home.
They're now clustered in small pots–red to remind me of my mom and my home; yellow (from a younger, less ambling bush) to remind me of my grandma, with whom I share my favorite rose color.
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