Sniff

Smells. When I was little, I used to watch my mother use her nose like a hound dog following a fox trail. She could detect things from far away. Impressive considering she has many different allergies. Allergies she passed on to me and her grandchildren, I might add. Perhaps she passed on the extrasensory nose benefits to me as well.

• On cool-crisp-smelling-nose-freezing-snow-filled days my mind travels back to times long ago on a snow machine, trekking through the wilderness and grasping the machine with my daddy wrapped securely around me.
• Occasionally, I catch a whiff of a unique smell emitted from packages my grandma would send from her home far away and it brings back memories of grandma's yummy food and grandpa's silly pranks he would play on my sister and I.
• When I smell the freshly formed wax crayons right before school starts, I get this excited, happy feeling just as I did every fall before school started as a young child.
• Freshly fallen leaves scent gives me an automatic runners high and a great desire to just take off and run through the woods. This was an exhilarating experience as a teenager at cross-country running practice.
• Scent of what some of you might consider disgusting - PineSol - brings back memories of scrubbing out wood showers and saunas at a camp I once worked at. I have fond memories of that camp situated on the beautiful green glacier waters.

Today, smells have turned into memories of my own children. Most of the smells are good smells! :-) Like the smell of a freshly washed baby, the smell of baby powder, the smell of lavender I put into their baby clothes, so many smells to pass on to them. I hope they are fond smelly memories!