Smelling Memories

A short essay on the power of memory and smell.

Walking out of my daughter’s school orientation, I told Amanda I needed to run to the restroom.  My daughter attends a small private school that rents space from a Methodist church with an elderly congregation.  The bathroom was just off the fellowship hall. 

I walked into the bathroom, turned on the lights, and stopped.  

That smell.  

It is incredible how a single smell can time-warp you back 31 years.  It was like in TV shows and movies, an entire person’s life quickly rewinds to a singular moment.  For me, it was the summer of 1991.  

I was 15.  My family and I had just moved into my father’s new church because there were still renters in the parsonage (you can read about that experience here).  There were two bathrooms in the church:  a women’s and, just around the corner, a men’s.  They were single-occupancy bathrooms, each with a singular toilet and a sink. Since we would be living in the church for the next month, bathing would have to be improvised.  The solution was a Rubbermaid tote filled with water, a washcloth, and soap.  

But the smell of those bathrooms was of a relic long past its prime.  The only way I can describe it would be the smell of cheap disinfectant and the ubiquitous pop-up gel air freshener seemingly found in every small Nazarene church. 

But it was more than that.  It was the smell of fear and the uncertainties of adolescence, the scent of a place where I didn’t feel welcomed or like I belonged—the smell of confusion and disquietude.  

Fast-forward back to the present.  

I used the restroom, somewhat surprised at the fact that I recognized the smell right away.  I was also amazed that while all these memories and feelings were instantly present in my mind, they did not trigger the same negative emotions of the past.  

Time restores the wounds of the past.  But in addition to time:  therapy, a loving and accepting partner who has encouraged (forced?) me to work through these feelings, and my personal growth all contribute to the healing.  

Conflicted, part of me wants to return to that bathroom at my daughter’s school to see if the smell is still the same.   Could it have been happenstance or coincidence?  Maybe.  But maybe not–the other part of me is at peace with letting those memories remain in the past. 

I want to revise the statement about time healing wounds.   Maybe time doesn’t heal past wounds. However, time just might make them distant enough for us to revisit them without feeling the full intensity of their pain.