The Scent of Us

After a lovely two week foray into Texas--where we welcomed our beautiful new niece Lilia Cecilia--I feel absolutely happy and contented to be in a place that smells like us. The scent of my in-law's home is unmistakable, smooth and fresh, like. . .guava skin and the taste of a rubber ball. When I open my suitcase or a package from them, the smell of Cockroft transports me back to their smooth brown tile floors, the circular kitchen table littered with playing cards and baby spoons, the granite counter tops and long leather couch.

Moving as frequently as we have, I feel anxious to instill our own distinctive smell in a place--coffee, baking bread, the smell that is ours somehow. Like an dog rolling in his bed, burying its nose and burrowing into his pillow, I try to fill a home with our own smell. The goal? To go away from home and come back, sniff, and feel with all my senses that I am back where I belong.

I have often been thwarted, whether by the apartment neighbor who chain-smokes (Illinois) or the strong reek of concrete paint (Texas) or the newish smell of a house that is too clean for us generally (Iowa).

And recently, when we returned to this house in PA, I walked in the door and was hit by the smell of the last owners, who never, ever opened any windows, drew all their curtains, and whose basement smelled musty. Even though we had pried off the storm windows, painted, stripped carpet off every surface, somehow--somehow!--their smell came back into residence during a short absence.

This is the first summer we have not moved in years. Perhaps our house sensed this and trusted us, for when we returned from Texas, we walked in the front door and smelled an old house's oak floors and banister, a mixture of herbs drying, cleaning agents, coffee and tea, beds slept in by our family, wisps of past meals--in short, we, like animals, smelled home, the many indistinguishable things that exude from our specific existence, the smell that surrounds us and confirms that yes, we do belong here.