smell

I have a good sense of smell.  Maybe even great sense of smell.  As I am unable to compare my actual sense with other's, it's hard to really come up with the right descriptive word to apply.  My grandmother had an amazing sense of hearing.  She could hear conversations being had at the other end of the house, secrets whispered under bushes by the pool.  Perhaps we're all given one sense that is dominant, maybe mine is smell.

It's an interesting thing, having a great sense of smell.  I will be sitting in my house on a summer's day and immediately jump up from the chair and run outside to look for smoke clouds on the horizon from a wildfire out of control.  Those around me will get a slightly panicked look on their face, wondering that the fire must be a block or so away if I could smell it so clearly.  Yet there are times where I can't even see the smoke on the distant horizon, the fire is so small or so far.  It's never close enough to see flames.  I can also identify what kind of fire it is- grass fire, house fire, car fire, fireplace, barbeque, fire pit.  Each has a distinct aroma from my memory and I can recall past instances that I've smelled that smell or memories associated with it.

When I was pregnant with Nate my ability to smell the slightest odors was even more profound. If Jed had celery in his salad at lunch, I would be livid when he came home 5 hours later because the smell  of it lingering on his breath made me nauseous. I couldn't get in a car at the time because when we drove past a diesel truck our car instantly smelled worse than a gas station and I couldn't breath until we had passed it and aired out the car.

Even now, the smell of sage will immediately bring me home.  The whiff of a certain perfume and I'm instantly five years old in my kindergarten classroom.  The smell of diesel and I'm on the ocean, crossing the channel yet again.  Certain laundry detergents remind me of old friends.

Maybe that's why I eventually came back to the country- it's alive with a whole different world of smells than the cities I spent my college and post-college years in.  It's the smell of dirt and water and plants and smells wholly separate from those created by humans.  When I choose something to plant I almost always take a leaf and crush it in my fingers before purchasing...often choosing what to buy or where to plant it based on smell alone.  When wandering my garden with a visitor, that is how I often introduce them to plants, "Try this one, rub your fingers over the leaves...stand over here, just downwind, do you smell that?"  It's the smell of life, of home, of growth, of things unseen.