Writing practice: The Scent of a Memory
Some memories arrive without warning. A familiar scent can take us back in an instant — to a person, a place, or a feeling we haven’t thought about in years. Perhaps scent remembers more than we realise.
There is something strange about scent.
A smell can disappear from our awareness almost as quickly as it arrives, yet somehow remain stored inside us for years. Then, one day, we smell it again — and suddenly we are somewhere else.
Perhaps it is the scent of a particular perfume. A house you grew up in. The soap your grandmother used. Wet earth after summer rain. Coffee in a kitchen you haven’t visited for years.
Scent seems to have a direct route into memory. It can bring back not only a place or a person, but a whole feeling: the atmosphere of a morning, the warmth of a particular room, the feeling of being young, safe, loved, or free.
I think that is why the scents we love can tell us something about ourselves.
Not necessarily because they are beautiful.
But because of what they hold.
And there may be more hiding in a scent you love than you think.
