On Monday, while picking mikans, I had one of those crazy olfactory flashbacks. You know those teleportation sessions that happen when a smell that transports you to a different time and place?
Moments after entering the little orange grove, the intense citrus scent scooped me up and I was suddenly five years old again and clinging to the top of a Louisiana satsuma tree in the side yard of our old farm house. Climbing higher and higher on the hunt for the sweetest, ripest orange until a sticky river of fear and orange juice started coursing through my body. The tree was bending under my weight and I was scared.
And in another flash, I was suddenly back in my forty-four year old body standing in the middle of a mikan grove with my kids and our dog, on an island surrounded by the Seto-Inland Sea of Japan. Isn't it strange when those moments happen? It almost seems as if time travel is possible via smell-induced triggers.
I used to love taking the tram & subway into downtown Brussels & wander around on my own when we lived in Belgium in the early '80s. We returned Stateside in 1984, but when Dad was posted to Den Haag in the early 1990s I visited for a week. While I was there, Mom & I did a day trip into Brussels. Walking into the Gran'Place, I closed my eyes and inhaled -- and my nose immediately screamed, "YOU'RE HOME!" to my brain. :-)
Our sense of smell is like music in the movies; you may not be consciously aware of its input, but it's forever linked to the feelings & emotions of a specific time and place.
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