My husband and I tend to be wine drinkers. He knows a lot about wine, but that's a story for another post. I glom onto his wine knowledge and derive the benefit of his study.
But lately life has been such that I am often in need of a drink to calm down, settle my nerves, forget about my day, what have you. Given that my husband does not always want to have a drink when I do, I suggested getting some box wine - that way I could partake as often as I wanted without the waste of opening a whole bottle if he wasn't drinking any. My husband picked out what he found to be the best respected box wine (I don't believe there was a long list here...but I give him credit for looking into this on my behalf).
That swill was undrinkable.
So apparently over the past couple of years my wine palate has developed enough that I can't drink the box wine anymore. I'm guessing I shouldn't even bother with Charles Shaw ever again. Mind you, these were my staples about 3 years ago, so it's not as if I've been some wine snob my entire legally-able-to-drink life. Hardly.
But I have so digressed.
After the box wine failure, my husband suggested I find a cocktail I like and just recreate that at home for nights when I want a drink. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to drink-fixing (not so when it comes to food fixing, paradoxically). So gin and tonic it was! I made one a short while ago and in lifting the drink to my lips, I was almost overcome with the scent of the sweet tonic, the tart lime, and the fizzy wonderfulness popping and crackling in front of me. But what hit me like a ton of bricks in that moment was the memory of the smell - a scent I smelled so often around an aunt who played a significant role in raising me. I can't say I saw her drink many gin and tonics in her day (though surely she must have); I just recall her sister drank them like water, and so whenever we were all together, my aunt made them, and she had the limes at the ready, and the smell, the smell - it was like I was 10 years old again, looking at my aunt and her sister and thinking how cool and sophisticated it must be to be able to drink such a drink and how much fun they seemed to have while drinking them....always laughing, forever smiling and giggling with one another.
Somehow my gin and tonic experience wasn't quite so exuberant as all that. But having the drink sure brought back a flood of happy memories about my aunt and my uncle who loved us so much. They're both gone now, and my life is less for it.
What scents trigger memories for you?
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The smell of freshly cut grass fills me with memories of my grandfather, who lived next door to us when I was growing up and thought teaching/forcing me to mow our 3 acres was a character building experience.
ReplyDeleteAnd the smell of cigarettes & hot vinyl car seats reminds me of my uncle who used to love driving "his girls" (my cousins, my sister & me) around town in his brown car. I think it might have been an Oldsmobile.