Smell//Nostalgia

my ticket to remembrance in a neurodivergent fashion

I haven’t found a place that smells like Denver.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. In fact, I feel neutral about it. There are far more places that smell better or worse than Denver.

Last week I parked my car near the apartment we used to live in after I left my ex-husband to walk the 3-4 mile loop, depending on time constraints and desire, that I would walk several times a week, sometimes daily, sometimes not at all for the two years that me and the kids, and eventually Anaya, lived there.

I heaved a baby in a carrier strapped to my chest, and eventually my back, on that loop. I took countless photos of Moonie on the bridge and in the “maze” on the greenbelt. I held hands and didn’t hold hands when her’s got sweaty and/or I was touched out. I swayed back and forth in an effort to get him to fall back asleep while Moonie stood sometimes patiently, sometimes impatiently, as kids do, as older siblings become conditioned to do; a side effect of another, smaller, younger thing taking up the air in the room. I kissed hands and knees when she tripped and he began to walk. I bought coffees and snacks and sometimes nothing. I cried into my mask and on top of his head and into hoodies and sweaters and silently and once I audibly heaved and sobbed just as I rounded the corner to the trail that lines the Platte.

I rounded that same corner while Love Songs by Kaash Paige played through my headphones as I texted Anaya before we had met in person. I told him my plans for that day had fallen through after all and yes, I would love to meet him for a beer in a couple hours.

The Platte stinks, period. Some portions are significantly worse than others and depending on the season, the temperature, the water levels, it is worse or better but mostly it just stinks. It smells as a river that runs through a city does. I have nothing poetic to say about it. But this part of the city, this one small sliver, a trail, the loop that I do that takes me from a neighborhood across a bridge that towers above a major interstate, into a greenbelt, into downtown, into and onto the trail that borders the Platte- depending on where you’re standing and the time of day, and the season, they all have their own distinct smell. That spot just as you cross the street and onto the bridge is a cauldron of foods and spices from restaurants and coffee shops. The butter from the lobster roll place and the restaurant space that’s been vacant for too-long- I can smell the pipes that have been sitting. If you’re industry, you know that smell. The walk across the bridge always smells like exhaust and piss and as you near the end you can begin to smell the fryer from the chicken place and just barely the waffle cones made in-house from the ice cream spot a block over. At this point you’re now closer to the green space and the river so the scent of earth- dead leaves or grass, and water- when it’s hot you can smell the sand, you know? Can you smell sand, too?

That day I was texting with Anaya about meeting up was warm even for March and everything smelled like mud and wet grass that the sun was still attempting to bake off. It was too early for lilacs but the scent of dianthus filled the space between my phone and my face. Maybe that was him or me, but I like to believe the city gardeners had already began setting that flower ground covering. That it was real.

Just several weeks prior it had snowed and instead of the thick damp of spring the smell of diesel and donuts carried me wordlessly through that same route and I remember thinking how grateful I was to not be able to smell the swell of the river or the trash and whatever-the-fuck collects on the sides of city rivers.

There was the time I snapped at Moonie after too-little sleep and too much caffeine for laughing too loud and startling her five month old brother awake in his carrier. It was only 30 degrees out that day and as we stood in front of a chain-but-just-fine restaurant long before service began, I could smell their ovens preheating and the sourness akin to baby vomit from the wine that inevitably spilled onto the concrete floors the night before. I wanted a glass of wine. I wanted to rest. I wanted to not be a fucking monster to my kids. I wanted to apologize to Moonie and I did.

But yesterday, long after my feet had already met the concrete trail, I could smell marijuana that had just been lit inside of a Swisher Sweet wrap. Pot smoke in the sunshine, specifically within the confines of the city, always reminds me of one thing first.

The Taste of Colorado. But not now, when I was a child.

This thing happens when you’re a kid and things feel and seem bigger and more significant, cooler than they are because they actually are. Maybe the Taste was always over-priced, lacking creativity, and redundant because that’s what it is to me now. We don’t go these days despite vacillating every year whether or not we should. It’s a street fair with fair-like food and the promise of more. A few years ago they did try with the more but it fell flat and was so unorganized and overcrowded that I gave up within the first thirty minutes. But as a kid, a poor kid, a poor, feral, running wild kid, it was proof that summer was real. It was a container within glass and concrete that held my version of treasure within a few-block radius. There was food, live music, amusement rides, late nights, and most of all, my mother.

My mother with her ultra long hair piled on top of her head and fastened with a pencil or pen or whatever. Her fat, tan legs in short shorts and a crop top. The millions of miles of silver jewelry she wore around her neck and wrists and ankles. Her laying on a blanket under a tree we secured early on because we played zero games back then and always made sure to have a home-base to come back to when the kids needed to take a beat, we needed to eat, and the adults did, too. My mother with her legs stretched out, passing a joint, passing me my too-big lemonade, passing napkins, passing tickets to the Zipper, passing time.

With me and with me and with me.

The smell of too many bodies, sweaty bodies. The way pot smoke sometimes collides and sometimes intertwines with other people’s scents. Their natural smell and whatever fragrance that clung to them by way of laundry detergent, lack thereof, the oil in their hair, and the staying power of cigarette smoke long after you’ve left a party. Patchouli in the sun, beer spilled on asphalt in the sun, oregano and onions in the sun, the way an empty plastic cup that once contained lemonade and ice smells after it has sat in the sun. The smell of my mother’s neck after she had been in the sun. The way I always knew what side of the park to walk down in order to find the gyros in the sun.

I paused during my walk yesterday, not noticeable to anyone else but me, and breathed in the blunt that I would later discover was at least another 4 minute walk to actually meet face-to-face. My mother didn’t smoke blunts, but the sentiment remains. In fact, I don’t recall the tobacco leaves from a Swisher to be a familiar smell from those days. That would come just a few years later.

Galveston and Santa Monica in the summer smell similar to me, but not Corpus Cristi. Summer in Corpus smells like Monte Cristo’s with jam, and I can still smell the sugar.

There is a place in the backwoods of Minnesota that smells like a town I drove through off the coast of Louisiana and Houston smells more like Atlanta. Seattle smells like parts of Manhattan but only in the winter. The smell of New York City in the summer is a smell all its own.

When I smell any variety of trail mix I am immediately catapulted to the early days of Moonie’s life when it was the only thing I wanted to eat. Pre-packaged varieties and eventually bought from the bulk-bins so that I could get 10 different kinds without buying stock in nuts and dried fruit and chocolate and pumpkin seeds. The candle from Target called Cozy Something smells like the first two months after we moved into our apartment. Moonie told me as much when she picked one up a couple weeks ago while we were shopping and told me it smelled like her old room. The scent of tomato plants reminds me of when I struggled to feed Maddox and myself the first few months of his life. The smell of worn leather and mint gum reminds me of riding in the car with my mom. Garlic on my hands will always remind me of the day I learned I had a missed miscarriage at 12 weeks the way cinnamon makes me think of my mother and her various types of simmer pots she kept on the stove.

I am hyper aware of how I smell, how my kids smell, how our home smells, how my car smells, and how incredible Anaya smells no matter the time of day or whether or not he has showered yet. Similarly, I am aware of the way I take in other people’s smells. I briefly dated a woman who was great on all accounts but I couldn’t get past the way she smelled to me- on my clothes and skin, long after I had left.

When I want to write I will first read but even before then I will light a candle or incense or open the windows or go outside to breathe in any, and everything, or a combination of all of them. If I want to remember I will pull out a roller of patchouli I keep stashed- it was my mother’s signature scent and as I have written before only smelled good on her and everyone agreed. I open tins of spices, I will drive to specific places. When I am developing recipes I constantly smell my food while I prepare it and while eating it.

I lay on my kids’ beds and breathe them in when they’re gone. I wear Anaya’s cologne-of-the-season when he is gone for long days or on trips. I am put off, and will obsess about, any unfamiliar or unpleasant smell coming from the fridge. It’s usually a forlorn cucumber if I’m being honest.

Tequila smells like summer and Suze smells like spring just like Manhattans are winter and an Old Fashioned is fall.

I can’t say it’s the scent of books I love but the scents I remember while reading something I loved. Have you read The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander? Any time I think of that book I think of the smell of the inside of a plastic pumpkin containing Halloween candy.

I can still smell the halved and spent lemons from the kitchen counter as I type this.

What are your favorite smells and which ones are most nostalgic? I want to know.

Currently Reading: I’m listening to Splinters by Leslie Jamison and damn

Currently Listening To: Fussy by MALIA which I put on my spring playlist from ‘22. The same playlist I made/was listening to on my walk while texting Anaya

Currently Cooking: I did some R&D for lemony chicken cutlets… leftovers and recipe to share soon xx

Biggest Love,

AR