Heightened "Scents" of Nostalgia

There are certain scents that take me back to a time and place. It's so powerful and evokes very specific memories.

Infant cereal: Whenever I smell this I can recall my baby brother sitting in his highchair in our kitchen. It's as if I'm right there while my mother spoon feeds him and gets his Playtex bottle ready for an after feeding snack. Baby brother is now 34 and 6'3" tall. And takes his Corona in a Playtex bottle. Not really.

Old paper: You might think "library" but no. My mother worked in a pharmacy pretty much my whole life up until adolescence. She was a single mom and would utilize daycare sparingly. Sometimes my brother and I would spend summers or school vacations hanging out in the stock room of the pharmacy. We'd bring activities to keep us occupied but mostly we played office. Adding machines were a big thing. When I got a little older I would do some data entry on a dinosaur they called a computer. By eleven years old I was queen of the ten key. Today's youth and their texting capabilities had nothing on my right hand. On special days, I got to answer the phone. I also did quite a bit of filing. Looking back I think they may have been violating several child labor laws. Does paying me in Big Hunk candy bars and strawberry Pop Rocks count?

Vanilla candles: No matter where I am when I encounter this scent, I'm immediately flooded with memories of spending time at my Cousin K's house, as a child in the 1970's. She's really my mother's cousin and has always been more of an "aunt" to me, but I've always called her "Cousin K" [there's more to her name than "K" but, you know, anonymity being what it is]. There are the copper bracelets she wore, the white four poster bed that I eventually inherited, the little Russian wooden dolls that opened to reveal a smaller doll and so on until the tiniest carved version emerged, the step down den, the fruit trees in the backyard, and the crazy jigsaw coffee table that I could crawl around in like a maze. You know how you can look back on your childhood and there was that ONE adult that stood above the rest? Yeah, it was like that. And, K, if you're reading this please will your copper bracelets to me. If they're still around. I promise to cherish them.

Beef stew: This would be my grandparent's house. We went there every Sunday for dinner while I grew up and on our birthdays we were allowed to request the menu. Both my mother and I would ask for beef stew and dumplings. And a 6 layer lemon and coconut cake because, COCONUT! My grandma made a mean beef stew. It was NEVER bland. You could smell it pulling into the driveway. It, by all counts, rocked hard. Other scents of Grandma's house: Prell shampoo, Lysterine, and tonic. As in vodka and tonic. Grandma was my kind of gal. Both have long since passed away and I still dream when I sleep, about being at their house.

Sarma: Reminds me of living at home. What is Sarma, you ask? It's a tasty little treat you may know as "stuffed cabbage". Whenever my step grandparents from Belgrade were visiting (and those people don't even kid around with vacation. They're all about the two months) we were treated to Sarma. The cabbage needed to um, pickle sour spoil age in a bucket that was kept in the garage. In the summer. In southern California. Did I mention it was in the garage? Not pleasant. However, it did make the yummiest dinner ever which would usually be followed by Palacinke which is basically a crepe. Sometimes there would be a torte or biadera (I don't even know how to spell it) which can be compared to our version of fudge, only with more nuts and less sweet. They were an animated bunch. Very boisterous. Lots of singing and guitar playing. And even though I could manage to understand and speak few words, we managed to communicate. They're both passed on now and I miss them.

I have no living grandparents. How much do you want to hug me right now? And what about you? What scents generate memories for you?