People spend New Year’s Eve reflecting on their past year. What do they remember most? How do they remember it? As an adult, most of my memories are visual and emotional, the emotions coming from sights and sounds – a flurry of colour, music, shouting, crying, laughing. But when I look back on my childhood memories many, if not most of them, are associated with smell.
Did you know that not only can newborn babies recognize the smell of their own mother’s breast milk but they can distinguish it from another woman’s breast milk? This is called olfactory memory and begins at birth. The newborn, who has associated the smell of amniotic fluid with warmth, food, comfort, and ultimately survival, now associates the smell of its mother, in particular, her nipples, with food, safety and warmth. This is part of the reason why babies, when given the chance, can find the breast all on their own, latch onto the nipple and nurse. Babies choose the smell of its mother’s breasts over formula even before its mother’s milk has come in. Evidence also has been found to suggest that exposure to an infant’s mother’s milk relieves pain, which is why mothers are encouraged to nurse during inoculations and the heel prick test.
In the brain, the olfactory cortex lies above the amygdala. The amygdala is involved in the formation of memories of emotional experiences, particularly those associated with fear, flight, and defense. It is connected to the hippocampus which is also associated with memory [Source]. If a person could have a favorite part of the brain, these would be mine. I love walking downtown when all of a sudden a man walks by with a certain cologne and I am immediately taken back to high school and those dreamy boy crushes – thanks amygdala! Chemical sensitivities be gone – if a perfume, soap or cologne brings back an emotional experience – I could smell it all day. Strange, but true.
There’s not much that smells better than the smell of a happy youth. Except, of course, the smell of being taken care of. I wasn’t breastfed and I’m certainly no fan of the smell of formula, but I am a fan of the hand cream my Grandma used. It was rose milk. I’ve looked high and low for it over the past few years but I think they stopped making it. Funny, I don’t have any smell associations with my own mother. I’m not sure why that is. I could possibly attribute it to the fact that she was a working mother, from the time I was five and older, or to the fact that most of my memories are linked to spending almost everyday and every weekend at my grandparent’s house. Indoor adventures were spent inside my grandma’s dusty medicine cabinet, trying on her Avon lipsticks and blushers, the powdery smell of make-up in the air. I also remember the smell of White Shoulders, but it is the smell that was on her hands, the rose milk, that gives me a ethereal hug and brings back memories of nurturing and love. With those hands she taught me to roll dough and bake pie, she made me cookies and a thousand dinners. She picked blackberries with me and carrots from the garden; she rubbed lavender between her palms and put them up to my face to smell, and she tucked me in at night. Rose milk.
I am beginning to sense the smell my children will associate with me. Not breast milk, because that smell will sadly fade from their memories. My five year old doesn’t remember nursing anymore, and she was three when she weaned. But lately, when I tuck them into bed at night, my girls get a happy dreamy smile on their face when I touch their faces and kiss them goodnight.
“You smell good, Mommy,” my five year old says.
I’ve become a little addicted to the patchouli lotion bar that LuSa Organics make. It’s one of few smells I can wear without feeling the need to crawl out of my skin. I wonder if the smell of patchouli is something my girls will come to remember me by, and in its absence, do I have a certain body smell? Some people seem to while others do not. I hope I have one. (And I hope it’s pleasant!)
Because more than a song or a kiss, I think it is the smells of childhood, and in particular the smell of comfort and safety – our parents – that brings smiles to the faces of the grown up children. Probably because if we can smell someone we are in close proximity to them. We are hugging them or dancing with them or doing another activity that puts us side-by-side. And spending time together, doing something fun or memorable, usually has a smell associated with it anyway. Even bad smells can bring happy memories. Crafts smell like glue, cutting wood smells like, well, cut wood or the gasoline from a chain saw, hikes smell like ocean, mountain or forest air, baking smells like sweet and warm starches. Doing homework or playing cards with my grandpa smelled like pipe smoke (maybe this is why I let myself marry a smoker), and grandma smelled like roses.
What smells do you associate with childhood? What smells do you think your children will associate with theirs?
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Posted by Melodie Attachment/Natural Parenting, Breastfeeding General, Breastfeeding Infants, Pregnancy & Birth Subscribe to RSS feed
I love this! Olfactory memory has been so important to me, even before I knew that anyone else ever experienced it!
I don’t know what the smell is (my cynical brother would say it’s mildew in the eaves!), but there’s something about my grandparents’ old house, which is now my parents’ house, that smells like childhood to me. I really can’t identify it, but it’s just so real to me. Sometimes I catch a whiff of something similar, and it instantly transports me back to those visits to Massachusetts when I was a kid. Now when my mom sends me a package, I immediately smell something that smells like her, a very pleasant scent but again not one I can name. But it makes me feel so warm and connected.
.-= Lauren @ HoboMama´s last blog ..Carnival of Natural Parenting =-.
I grew up in a house with wood heat, and so wood smoke always makes me think of comfort and home and safety.
As for my kids – I don’t know. My daughter tells me she likes the way I smell, but not what I smell like. My best guess as to the smells she enjoys would be baking. Chocolate chip cookies or homemade bread, but I guess I’ll have to wait to know for sure.
.-= Amber´s last blog ..The Next 10 Years =-.
Is this your Rose Milk?
http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Mil.....B000087L6T
I hope so.
Anyways, the only smells I remember are of horses. One broodmare in particular always had a strong scent like tobacco barns almost but sweet and earthy and elegant- intoxicating. And the smell of a stall freshly bedded with straw awaiting a new foal, and the smell of amniotic fluid on tiny little horse foreheads. Anything resembling these can send me reeling to the happiest years in my childhood.
Loved the post. Makes me wish I could have bottled the smell on the side of Ellie’s head that she had until just recently. It was so intoxicating to breathe in. And now I am considering finding a signature scent for her to remember me by as I never wear anything like that.
Oh my Goodness Star! Yes! It’s in a different bottle but I’d know that little rose symbol anywhere. Thank you sooo much! This just totally made my day I could cry!
.-= Melodie´s last blog ..The Smells of Childhood =-.
My mother, sadly, smelled of cigarette smoke. I don’t like smoking but the smell of a certain brand of cigarettes still catches me with a touch of nostalgia. So does the smell of certain things cooking from her recipes, much more happily. The smell of dust (we lived on a gravel road, it got in). I’ve forgotten Dad’s scent, and nothing’s evoked it since the scent faded from his shirts and pillow after his death. But the smell of woodsmoke, which he loved, brings him back to me a little.
I’m not sure what scent my children will associate with me. Hopefully my favorite carnation perfume – I want to wear it again, and should start. (I stopped during pregnancy because strong scents were not a good thing, and never quite started up again since my DS likes to mouth me. As he gets older that’s less true, but I always get the stuff on my fingers applying it. Ack.)
This is sweet.
I once walked around the city for hours wondering why I was so vividly remembering cuddling with my dad early one winter morning in such complete detail — I could remember his scratchy whiskers, hear and see his rustly newspaper, and smell him. Then I realized it was the pound of fresh roasted coffee in my backpack that was triggering those memories by smell. If a picture is worth a thousand word than a just-right smell is 10,000.
Also, I very much enjoyed my nursing and then recently weaned daughter’s running commentary on the smell of my boobs while I was pregnant with my third. “Mom, those smell FANTASTIC.” After I weaned her whenever she asked to nurse again I told her to just smell. And wow, did she ever go for it! She made some of the most satisfied sounds I have ever heard a human make!
.-= Betsy´s last blog ..HE SAID SHE SAID: On Our Home Birth =-.
@Laura – It’s strange when we associate our loved ones with yucky smells. One of my most nostalgic smells is also of smoke. Most of the time I can’t handle ANY perfume smells either because I’ve developed a pretty intense sensitivity to perfume and physiologically react quite negatively, but if someone walks by wearing Obsession or Armani I practically do a 360 and it’s all I can do not to follow them down the road!
@Betsy – What an awesome comment. Your daughter loving up the smell of your milk reminds me of the way I am at Christmas with ham. I don’t eat it anymore, but I absolutely LOVE the smell. Brings back so many happy memories.
.-= Melodie´s last blog ..The Smells of Childhood =-.
Lovely post. Beautifully written. And so true.
It seems odd to me that the one I remember quickest is my uncles. I didn’t see them often but they were quite the characters, kind of Old West types – they lived in Dawson City Yukon and no joke, mined gold in the summer and raced sled dogs in the winter. Visiting them was a time of freedom, running wild on their property and playing with their dogs. They smelled of B.O, cigarette smoke, diesel & dog feed. Sometimes, in a garage or other place, I smell a rough and tumble old guy who smells just like them and while the smell is gross, it brings back fond memories of playing with my uncles.
For the life of me, I can’t remember what my grandparents or parents smelled like.
And my kids? I guess I better ask them.
.-= BluebirdMama´s last blog ..Vision =-.