12/16/03’s illustrious band:

Jingle Smells

Brought to you by Sister-san, who coined this phrase in response to my musings about the aroma of fresh-baked tributary (gingersnap) cookies.

Odors are among the most powerful memory triggers. This time of year is full of different smells, and each one reminds me of something different. The smell of gingerbread means “home for the holidays,” because it’s usually at Mother Media’s house that the famous cookies (and numerous other goodies) are baked. Peppermint means excitement, because it’s at holiday time that kids get candy canes from downtown merchants and as school treats. If people are handing out free candy canes, you know parties and presents are just around the corner.

The smell of evergreen means coziness. Mature pine trees lined our sloping back yard all the years I was growing up. Neighborhood kids and Girl Scout troops slid our sleds under them between doses of hot chocolate and marshmallows at the marker-marred kitchen table. Mom used their boughs to decorate the house for Christmas.

There were several years when our family trekked into the Black Hills to harvest our own Christmas tree and rode home in Dad’s Jimmy with sticky sap on our mittens, fragrant in the turned-up heat. Sometimes in the fall we’d go into the Hills, too, to gather firewood for the old stove in the basement that helped heat the house. I seldom minded hauling and splitting and stacking the logs because it was good work in the crisp air, and we had baloney sandwiches on white bread to take for our lunch.

When I inhale fresh, clean snow on a sunny winter day, I always think of skiing. I spent many a winter Sunday on the slopes of Deer Mountain, racing headlong downhill, not slowing until the last moment, when I would turn my skis, feet together, and carve a huge roostertail of snow from the trail. Or, having mastered the art of complete turns, I’d do elegant 360s all the way down the hill, leaving curlicue tracks in my wake.

We always carried a trail mix of peanuts and raisins and M&Ms in our coat pockets for the long rides up the chairlift, swaying high above the slope, but at noon we’d clomp inside in our stiff boots to eat in the chalet cafeteria. We packed our own as often as not, but the smell of french fries still pervaded every lunchtime. Skiing was always exhilarating, always fun, so fresh snow smells like fun.

Right now, I can smell chocolate because someone just brewed a fresh cup of cocoa. And that reminds me, it’s been at least an hour since my last dose. Gotta go!

Today around the world: December 16, 1773 (230 years ago), is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The Sons of Liberty, led by Samuel Adams (the revolutionary leader, not the tasty malt beverage) dumped tons of British tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation policies of the British government.

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