“Scent can take us further than memory can”

When I think about my family home – and I think about it perhaps far too often considering I have not stepped foot in it for many years – I can see the poinsettia tree that stood sentry outside it.

It grew as we did, from a sapling to a giant with bejewelled branches that bent and brushed the footpath beneath it.

I see our long hallway; the chest of drawers studded with photos of weddings and christenings and trips to the Gold Coast; my sister in a green halter top and a lorikeet on her head.

I see the kitchen with its black and white lino floor and carved, wooden clock, and the cabinet my mother kept the good china in.

I see the six of us – myself, my mother and father, my brother and two sisters – at the kitchen table, our father at its head, playing quizmaster. Who’s the prime minister? What is the capital of France? Where is the Valley of the Kings?

Two of those chairs now empty. My father and my brother, just the girls left now (although at 97, my mother is no longer technically a girl until you look into her dancing eyes and see her dancing still).

But when I think about my family home, it is not so much the sights that allow me to travel back there, through the front, lattice door and down that long hallway, but the scents.

Scent can take us further than memory can; it can take us tumbling through time to the place where the past is close and real. Because when I want to remember the house I grew up in, I breathe in. Specifically (and not at all romantically) I breathe in the scents beneath the kitchen sink, a sharp, pungent mix of Ajax, Steelo soap pads, and lemon.

When I want to remember my father, I breathe in too. My father smelt like cigarettes and coffee and books; my elder sister’s room smelt like lipgloss and Dolly magazines; the frangipani beside the back stairs smelt like summer.

Last week a reader wrote to me to tell me that his wife of many years had died, and that she had been, in his words, “a wonderful girl”. She sounded it. He told me she had a great laugh, sang when she cooked, and liked to spray a little rose perfume in their room at night. She said it helped her sleep better. And now that she is gone, he sprays a little of that rose perfume about as well. He said it helps him sleep better too.

Scent can bring people back to us. And places. And entire lifetimes we think are long gone.

They linger in the scent of freshly mown grass, furniture polish and sea spray. In salt and vinegar chips. Cinnamon. Crisp, cotton sheets. Roads we have travelled with the windows down. And in the wonderful girl who sang when she cooked; the one with the great laugh, and the two of you making your life together in a room that smelt like roses.

I would love to hear about the scents that remind you of home, your childhood, a person or a place. Please send your replies to frances.whiting@news.com.au