Some believe that the sense of smell is our most enduring and reliable sense. With it, we can be transported across space and time. Memories will rush from a whiff of something good or bad, and some scents are so universal that it doesn't take much for a mere mention by others to conjure our own memories: the smell that precedes rain, wet dog, cinnamon and sugar baking.
One of my earliest olfactory memories, aside from the scent of mothballs, aging textiles, and the faint rosewater of my grandmother's armoire, is the smell of lavender.
Though I was born in London, England during a sweet-pea spring, I did not identify with the country (or even know much about it) growing up. I lived my first half-decade in Sri Lanka, and then came to the US at kindergarten. My first trip back to London was in 1973 when I was nine years old.
Throughout our long overnight flight from Los Angeles, I had already been luxuriating in the rarified atmosphere of the British Caledonian Airlines jet - probably a DC-10. I was mesmerized by the trim and tailored navy uniforms of the stewardesses (they would not be referred to as flight attendants for some time to come) and relished the dainty-portioned meals that were delivered in interlocking plates. I felt like I was at a doll's tea party because I had never known anything to be so small and yet so complete. There was a pat of tiny foil-wrapped butter to accompany a soft egg-glazed roll, a wrapped wedge of sharp Cheddar cheese, an entrée with vegetables and a small salad. My brother and I drank ginger ale and saved the square of delicately frosted chocolate cake for last.
When we arrived at Heathrow Airport the following afternoon, my family and I gathered our things to disembark. In those days, not every airplane knew the ease of sidling into a jetway that was directly connected to the terminal. Some passengers disembarked on the tarmac, descending a sturdy moveable stairway and walking a short distance to the gate. We did not lug luggage, because we stowed our bags so that someone else had to worry about them. I had a small white wicker purse with a leather handle that probably contained a handkerchief provided by my mother and little else. There was a promise from my father that when we arrived, we'd be granted a small allowance in British currency for souvenirs.
By the time I reached the bottom of the rolling stairway, I sensed something different about the air. There was a cool and misty humidity to it that I had missed my entire childhood in arid California. My fine and straight hair immediately began to curl into waves.
When we got to my aunt's house, where we would be staying, I wandered into her small cottage garden and marveled at the flowers. I would not know the names of them until I became an adult and cared about perennial gardening - hollyhock, foxglove, lily-of-the-valley, primrose, and lavender... oh, the lavender! Immediately, I knew that this scent would figure large in my life - it had to! The smell was bright and peppery but powdery sweet. I touched a frond and found that the aroma lingered on my hands.
It seemed that everywhere we went in London, I spied some lavender - spilling out of cottage gardens in the suburbs where my family lived, filling proper window boxes along brick and sandstone rowhouses, and lining the walkways of the parks and gardens we visited. Lavender was ubiquitous and unique.
In the years to follow, that lavender scent would be replicated in the Yardley's English Lavender soap that was the only thing my aunt used and which became my personal favorite. Lavender became a favored plant when I set up my garden in Central New York, which in my mind has a similar atmosphere allowing for some of the same flowers that grace an English garden. Now, my favorite flower thrives in two places and I wait patiently for the blue-green stalks to burst with buds for harvesting. This year, I arrived home from a trip too late to catch them in their preblossom state - the best for drying and storing, but the grand aroma of a simple but elegant flower reminds me of my dear late aunt, and my first trip back to England. It reminds me of cool air and misting rains, travels and returning home, of luxury and simplicity.
When I smell lavender, decades and decades after my first encounter, I am as enthralled today as I was then. If that isn't a powerful sense, I am not sure what is.
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