Cloves and Old Memories

There was a "haunted house" at our school carnival.  It was a darkened classroom that had been rigged by a busy group of parents so that when you handed over your admission ticket you were led into a very dark and frightening place filled with sounds of creaking doors and wailing cats.  There was a table where you were led and told to plunge your hands into a deep bowl of "brains" (pasta noodles) or "eyeballs" (olives) and then a witch screamed in a corner and a light flashed on and off.  Her face was green and her hair was snarled and gray. 

So, why am I thinking about all this at Christmas? 

In the same room was another table at which you were to feel, taste, or smell things with your eyes covered by a blindfold and guess what they were.  It was a simple game, and with adrenaline shooting your senses into full alert, the experience was ingrained into deep memory cells.  One of the fragrances was cloves, one that I happen to like. 

I've been making Christmas cookies the past two days and cooking more food than usual. I used cloves in a traditional cookie recipe and the fragrance connected me instantaneously to the clove-sniffing moment in the haunted house. Odors are powerful that way.  You can probably think of a list of some very strong memories connected to very specific odors, and memories - vivid ones - come flooding back to you. 

People who have brain surgery when they're awake recall things like particular fragrances when one area of the brain is touched by the surgeon. Or, if you inhale some innocuous odor, you are immediately reminded of your grandmother or the old cat you used to have or a beautiful girl you once kissed.  Or, in my case, that handsome guy's after shave. 

A lot of the things we do during the holidays are intensely connected to familiar odors.  I can replicate a recipe my grandmother gave me if I inhale the dough's fragrance and know I've gotten it right. If I smell pine pitch, I think of a certain place or time, and usually that kind of memory will be the most significant one that's cemented in my mind by adrenaline or excitement that I was in the middle of when I smelled the odor.

Perfume makers in Paris have a whole host of essences that they create signature perfumes with.   Mothers who have only smelled their new babies one time after birth have its scent imprinted in their minds and know when a baby is not their own. The part of the brain that knows and remembers odors is one of the first to develop in our brains as we grow; it's very primitive and elemental. But, wouldn't you know it, our wise brain - the frontal lobes - develops last.  

Close your eyes and experience the fragrance of balsam or burning pine logs or slow-braised onions and see where your memory takes you.  Cloves took me to a haunted mansion experience, one that I have only recalled because I detected the cloves' fragrance, and one I had no idea would come to me until the very moment it happened.  You can use "good" fragrances to trigger pleasurable memories and help yourself take your mind off of what you're in the middle of now.  A caution though:  If the stress is too high while you are experiencing the old beloved fragrance, your mind will associate it with the more-adrenalized stressful moment of now instead of then. 

Hot mulled wine? Barbecued steak? Campfire smoke?  Ah yes....I recall...