mostly smells but there's another bird poem in here too

Check out The Wrath-Bearing Tree for two of my poems, "My childhood smelled like" and "Surprise Dawn."

There is strong evidence that our sense of smell is more closely linked with memory than our other senses.  And this has always been the case for me.  Whether my grandma's lilacs actually soaked up the booze or it was the faint yet constant hum of booze in the air from the bar next door, I'll never know.  But when I smell lilacs I always smell a little booze too and I am right back at my grandma's house listening to the honky tonk music from the bar next door.  

I also loved smelling one of our dog's feet.  Really!  Her name was Surely Not a Cat (Surely for short) and her feet smelled just like fire.  As a kid, it made perfect sense to me.  She ran so fast I was sure her paws could start a fire.  No other dog's feet have ever smelled the same.  When people asked my mom what kind of dog Surely was, my mom said she was "poodle, pom, and terror."  This also made sense to me because she was a little terror, a real beast of a little dog, with so much attitude and spunk.  It took an embarrassing amount of time before I realized my mom was saying, "poodle, pom, and terrier."  

But do I hear that as an adult?  Nope.  I can hear my mom's voice, plain as day, saying, "poodle, pom, and terror."  And I hear that every time I smell fire.

Oh and the smell of the lake!  Nothing beats it.  Every once in a while I catch a whiff of it and there's only happiness with that.  Good feelings galore.  

I also have fond memories of the junkyards my brothers and I frequented with my dad.  I enjoy the smell of oil, grease, tar, mold, and funk, but maybe not the old refrigerator kind.  Mostly because they represent a kind of paradise filled with things to take apart and machines filled with treasure - forgotten coins and circuit boards with diodes in every color.  Oh and I love the smell of drywall and fresh timber thanks to the first house I ever lived in, which was a trailer with an add-on that took all the years I lived in it to complete (at least this is how I remember it).  I rarely mind the noise of construction sites because they bring back all those memories.

I can go on and on and I bet you can too now that I've got you thinking about what your memories smell like.  What kind of smells bring up memories for you?  I hope they're happy ones!