There’s a spot on Miami’s trails that look just like Maine, smell just like Maine. I took a friend there this past weekend for a hike. We walked along, exclaiming about the tall, tall pines and blanket of pine needles crunching under our shoes, but then I’d catch a drift – sharp and clean. You might think “candle,” but I think “Maine,” and just like that, I’m at my grandparents’ camp. I kept punctuating our walk with whiplash stops, wanting to stay in that memory. I was unsuccessful.

In high school, I hung out with this nerd group who thought studying together was fun. At one point, a member of the group read a study about how scent evokes memory, and we thought it worth the try. I donated my Pier 1 room spray to our experiment, and that night’s study session became a spritz-and-flashcard fest with just enough left in the can for the next day’s test. Our teacher, the Indomitable Mary Jane Roberts (who has not received enough play on this blog for being the world’s.best.history.teacher.ever) questioned why we were spraying up her classroom with pumpkin spice, but she allowed it, and we did well on the test? I’m not sure. I don’t remember that part as well as the smell. It stings in my nostrils. It probably gave me cancer.

Another smell is Smoke & Butter – a heady combo I discovered in my grandma’s kitchen. She had this step-stool counter chair (that I want back), and I’d perch there, happy to watch her cook and hear her monologue while she alternated drags of her unfiltered cigarettes with stirs of whatever was in the frying pan (pierogies, mostly). I suppose I could re-create this one, but again, cancer. I miss it, though – enough so that I don’t mind the odd moments I catch a whiff of someone smoking outside. I just wish they were frying something, too.

The last is my parents’ cologne. Thankfully, they’re static in this preference. I don’t know the brands, and I can’t describe the smell, but I recognize it instantly – most recently at this past Christmas. They emerged from their room in their green and red, smelling as they always have, and I’m there and way back when – safe and loved.

Tommy turned 8 this week, Jesse turns 13 in a month, and Ezra turns 10 this summer. As I’m flipping through my 40, I’m wondering what the boys are storing and whether it will serve them as these memories of people and place have served me. I have no cabin in Maine to take them to every summer. I used the last of the Pier 1 spray in 11th grade. I don’t smoke, and I don’t wear cologne. I do fry with butter. So, butter. And maybe coffee and fires in the fireplace.

Of course, the smell isn’t as important as what they will do when it wafts their way. Will they shoo it away? Or, will they stay, trying to hold onto what was good for longer than the breeze allows?