~ by Rachel Lianna Holland
It smells like bike tires and takes you back to a cool garage on a hot summer afternoon; bare feet dirty; tan, youthful skin slick with sweat as you wrestle the bikes apart. It’s unusually dark seeming because your pupils are still pin-points from playing in the sun.
It’s an essential oil, citrus or lavender. Taking a whiff reminds you of a fragrance your mother wore when you were very little, and you remember your child’s confidence in her warmth and love. Just a little, familiar smell.
The smell is wood smoke, drifting over the backyard, as you stand in an autumn twilight and watch winking stars peek through the veil of night. The air nips through your jacket; the wind musses your hair. You close your eyes and breathe deep of cold and smoke.
Fresh cut grass and gasoline. A golden summer evening as the sun approaches the horizon, a half-thought of fairies dancing in the sunbeams, and a heaviness on your eyelids in the warmth.
Laundry detergent. A particular brand; you don’t know the name. You’re standing on the balcony of the college dorms on a winter night, about to head down to the laundry room with the roommate who always uses that brand of detergent, a stuffed bag of sweaters and jeans slung over your shoulder.
Wood, fresh-cut…it smells like that one closet at your best friend’s house when you were nine.
A smell. It can take you anywhere and any time, back to years you’d thought forgotten, or a place your memory neglected for years, and all of a sudden, you feel that air on your skin again, see that light that hung in the sky, feel that hand or embrace or the cool stone underfoot, once more.