Scents

Spring blossoms with hope and promise. Summer is approaching, the threat of snow is all but gone (at least in Southern Ohio), and the hopes of a New Year that were delivered in January begin to brighten.


And so it is as I skip and hop through spring. And I give thanks for the power of scents.


I pass a flowering bush and a scent hits me with a rush of memories that have long faded, but lie behind a mysterious veil that shrouds my memory banks. That smell of a particular flowering bush instantly propels me back to my days at the College of Wooster, as these bushes grew just outside my door in the Freshman dorm and elsewhere across the campus. Suddenly, I am 21, full of life and energy and seething in raw hormones that create an interesting persona of invincibility, drive and craziness. The power of scent is undeniable.

Too, there are a couple of perfumes that instantly provoke an emotional longing, a sense of lost promise, lost love and a rush of faded photos which I cannot quite make out as they flash through my head. I'm not sure who I associate with which scent, but clearly someone I dated, someone to whom I had a strong emotional attachment once wore that fragrance. Unfortunately, as the fragrance has gotten more and more dated, I have this experience less often. But I love that raw emotional reaction to a simple smell. That longing I've almost forgotten.


The smell of the ocean gives rise to such a complex of reactions it is impossible to sort them all out. My wife and kids and I have vacationed on the ocean for many years. Sometimes as a family on an adventure to Nantucket, or driving through Maine and experiencing such wonders as fairy houses set amidst a deeply wooded island path, a fantasy my children will never forget. Or other trips with best friends, with young children and, later, with teens, who loved the ocean; the wonders of a walk on a beach at night with flashlights, catching crabs, experiencing the sudden jolt of a crab leg striking one's leg in the mysterious inky black of the ocean, finding oneself amidst a veritable school of rays as they forage for food in the shallows by the shore, afraid to move lest a sting might result or a ray might be injured.

Many vacations as a child rush through my head as we explored Florida before it became so overbuilt and crowded. A small cottage on Crystal River, with a spring at the end of the dock, spewing water so clear you could see into the blackness of the hole, 10 feet below the surface, as if it existed at the bottom of your bathtub. I can recall diving down to the hole, feeling the cold rush of water as it emerged, fearful of going into that black darkness, not knowing what might lurk within. Watching from the dock as "Sea Cows," as we called them back then (Manatees), lazily swam past, truly looking like graceful cows floating through the depths of the clear, cool river waters. And I swear to goodness, we always wore flip flops and for some reason at that house or in that place, I always stubbed my big toe. I think I must have done that 15 times in my life and I can't remember my children ever stubbing their toe like that. It would lay open a flap of skin across the width of the big toe and hurt like heck the whole vacation. It seemed to happen every year.


Weeki Watchi, Cyprus Gardens, Parrot Jungle, all left enduring memories from my childhood, as we visited the unusual, the exciting and the natural habitats of Florida and the odd commercial attractions that often grew out of the beauty of nature.


And then the fateful trip as a high school graduate with my best friend, Marc Haugen. My Dad told me I couldn't go. I went anyway. We drove to Myrtle Beach at high speed. Testing the limits of his parent's car, listening to 8 Track tapes of the Temptations, Santana, Leonard Skynard, Clapton, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendricks.


Marc was a lady's man at a very young age. I was a nerd. I'd worn braces all four years of high school. I got them off days before we left for Myrtle Beach! I wish I had access to my senior picture to prove just how nerdy I was. But I hung with the cool guys and I was a little bit of a charming nerd, so I had potential.

We soon met a group of southern girls from Winston Salem, NC. They were the nicest, most beautiful girls I had ever met. Their accents flowed like honey. Lightly tanned, blonde and perfect, they seemed. The week was looking full of promise. Marc quickly became known as "Lance Romance" but one of the girls must have liked his style because they quickly hooked up. We drank "Green Goddamn" and "Purple Passion" and wished like heck we hadn't the next day.


The second day, as I was starting to lay a foundation of hope with one of the girls, Marc and I went to the beach and joined some of the boys from Winston Salem in a game of touch football. At that time in my life, I thought I had the best hands in the world. If I could touch it, I would catch it. I went out for a long pass across the middle. The ball went up in a long, high arch. I took my bead on the ball, changed my angle and knew that nothing would keep me from catching that damn ball. Nothing. But I hadn't calculated in one possibility. That a defender from the opposite side of the field would take the same bead on the same ball at the same speed and leap to catch that ball at the same time, with ball, me and defender all reaching the same point in space in the same moment. In that moment, I experienced a painful reminder of many lessons I had just learned that past year in physics. Mostly that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless another force acts upon it. Our two bodies acted upon each other in a gruesome, show of force.


I guess he must have outjumped me because my front teeth struck his lower jaw, right at the left side of his face. They sliced his lip, through and through to the bottom of his chin. I don't know how many stitches he required. I don't think he remained for the rest of the week. I got the worst of it though. My perfectly matched, perfectly spaced teeth, resulting from those four years of wearing braces had been re-arranged. My right two incisors were now facing backward, pointing at my epiglottis. The rest of my mouth was numb from the impact. One of my new found friends came up and said, "Let me see your teeth." At that moment I felt fine, but knew I was bleeding. When I showed him, he turned away in disgust and fear. The look on his face told me more than I wanted to know. It was bad.


First we drove to the hospital. The funniest person I have ever met rode with us. I have no idea what his name was. If he didn't become a famous comedian, there is no justice in this world. We laughed our asses off as we drove over there, in spite of my condition. After we waited the obligatory hour, the hospital sent us to an emergency dentist. He took me in, did x-rays and came back with the bad news. I had broken five upper teeth, the two right incisors, were completely broken through (duh!) and the upper bone out of which they grew was broken in three places. He wanted to pull the two lopsided teeth (and give them to me as souvenirs, I guess). So I did the first intelligent thing I had done in 18 years. I asked, "Is there any chance that I could keep those teeth and not need them pulled out?" When he said there was a chance, I quickly told him, "Then you ain't pulling them out." They are still in my head. But on the trip back home, my comedic friend did an hilarious impression of the dentist as an evil bad guy who wished to steal my teeth and collect a big fee from a stupid 18 year old. It was like Boris Karloff was in the car with us.


I left his office with all my teeth. He had pushed the two broken teeth into the best position he could manage and then wired everything together and applied some kind of material that hardened into "tooth cast." My love life was doomed. All those visions of soft kisses, pleasant hugs and who knew what else, were left in the bloody sand of Myrtle Beach.


All these memories are triggered by the scent of the ocean air, plus quite a few more of which I should not speak; mostly those that spring from college forays to the beaches of Daytona, FL.


So share with us the scents that trigger your memories and some of the experiences you might have had as a child or as an adult. Or how scents may trigger something inside of you.


Steve