summer
Sarah Brown once said she had a theory that for every single person on the planet, there’s a sentence that if it were said to them by the right person or at the right time with the right words, everything in their life would right itself from that point forward. (If I remember correctly, my sentence was “Wow, you don’t dance like a white girl at ALL.”)
But, being the food-obsessed type that I am, I wonder if that sentence could be a taste, or that taste a smell. I believe that there are sensory experiences that get tucked places we forget about, and we wander around looking for things to lure them back into the present. We just want it back — for even a split second — because things in the moments that follow seem to fall more smoothly into place.
For me, it’s this: the damp spot on top of a ripe tomato when you twist the vine off. It smells like summer to me, back when tomatoes came free from our backyard and not at surprising sums from Holland; it smells like basil, like lawn, and it’s the first thing I stick my nose in when I get the tomatoes home from the store.
What’s yours?
Its just like music.. a certain song brings you to a moment in time and for a period of time after that, all seems right with the world.
I have to agree with you on the tomatoes… for summer
The taste of a strawberry for early summer
The sight of Daffodils for spring
The smell of the ocean to totally “center” myself
and of course Pumpkin Pie for the holidays!
These photos are wondrous. Exquisite.
People do not know what to make of me (either) when I am dancing. I channel black men.
I like how tomatoes invisibly stain your hands with scent.
I only went berry picking once…but it’s the smell of berry sweetness and the juice stains and stickiness on your hands once you’ve finished harvesting. That’s summer to me :)
I absolutely adore your photos - those tomatoes look amazing…
The photos look awesome !! There is nothing quite so delicious as juicy, vine ripened tomatoes and your pictures capture that essence
Those are some beautiful tomatoes!
I would have to say brown sugar-crusted sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving. It’s everything sweet and delicious and we only have it once a year. Whenever, where ever I smell dark brown sugar that’s a bit burnt, I think of my family, crouched around my grandma’s kitchen table, inhaling at warp speed.
Your writing is beautiful Deb. This site is excellent!
I think the smell of bread baking in the oven has got to be one of the most comforting to me. My mom bakes bread, so it reminds me of her, and it makes me slow down, appreciate the moment, and the whole process is so sensory-intensive. There are so many though, it’s hard….the smell of fresh cut grass, the sound waves crashing on the beach, the feel of the cool fall air. There are so many of these wonderous moments in life. They are what make life truly magical, and I could never commit myself to just one.
For me it a combined scent of several things blending together - fresh air heady with roses, gardenias and garden vegetables, mixed with the smell of something savory in the oven, lemon furniture polish and the faint smell of a long forgotten More cigarette left burning in the ashtray. This is the smell of my grandmother’s home in South Texas when I was growing up. Every holiday, birthday, and long weekend were spent there and that smell just mean “Grandma’s House” to me.
Bacon, frying and coffee on the stove in the morning. I used to stay with my grandparents because my parents worked third shift, and every morning my grandmother would fry bacon and make fresh coffee - not in a coffee maker! - and the smells would pull me from sleep. I hope to bring my kids down the hall someday to warm breakfasts, too. (I’m living in their same house! Talk about nostalgia.)
Yesterday evening I went for a long walk.
A smell of fried chicken wafted through the air. I was walking
with my husband and recalled how this time of the year we used
to go camping with a lot of family. Everyone would bring a whole
fryer. They’d cut it up and have a big chicken fry.
Reminded me of the end of summer, thats when we’d go camping.
Perfect camp weather.
i’m a tomato sniffer too (that sounds sooo dirty). their aroma sends me into rhapsodies!
my happiness would be a sound/aroma combo, of my dad in the kitchen making me mickey mouse pancakes
that is my pure hapiness
The smell of wet concrete after it rains for the first time in a really long time. It reminds me of my childhood, riding bikes til dark all summer long.