I was returning home a few evenings ago and I smelled, in the hallway of the block, the smell of fried meat. I’m not a meat fan, never have been, although I’m not a vegetarian.


But that smell had the Madeline effect on Proust on me; it took me right back to my childhood, when my mother would come home from work around 4 or 5 in the afternoon and quickly make something to eat. Then we’d all gather around the table. Those family ‘togetherness’ moments, even if they weren’t frequent, even if they weren’t always happy, gave me a certain comfort. Perhaps the child’s need for security was fulfilled by this ritual.
Anyway, I thought that evening: what triggers will today’s children have that will take them back to the past?
Of all the senses, smell is the strongest. It transports us most often.
Here are a few of the things that transport me; many are olfactory, but I also have olfactory, auditory, tactile:

  • The smell of holiday baking;
  • The smell of pine, cinnamon, oranges, tangerines;
  • The taste of icicles, in winter (yes, we ate them, when we were little);
  • The feeling a snowflake leaves on your cheek;
  • The crunch of frozen snow underfoot;
  • The taste of plum or cherry jam – these were the most common in my childhood;
  • The smell of coffee brewed in a pot;
  • The smell of dry grass that people in the country burn in autumn – it heralds the end of the summer holidays;
  • The smell of grass mown in spring or early summer;
  • The smell of old books – takes me straight back to the years when I used to go daily to the Central State Library in Doamnei Street (now there is no library there, it’s a restaurant, maybe there are others there, unfortunately; it was a space worth keeping for activities of a different kind);
  • The smell of warm bread – we sometimes waited for hours for the bread to come to the shop; when it was warm, we ate it already on the way home;
  • The smell of white and yellow flowers, I think the Mother of God’s Hand is called; I loved them when I was little so much that I thought of making compote out of them. I got sick from that compote ????
  • Francis Lai’s music from Claude Lelouch’s film, Un Homme et une femme transports me straight back to Paris when, on my first visit, I heard it in a café on Rue de Rivoli.
    What triggers different emotions for you? What would you add to this list?