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It’s cottage close-up time.
The smell of fall is in the air and a few yellow leaves from the birch trees litter the deck with the promise of more to come over the next month.
On the wind, I can smell the fire that matches the smoke wafting up the chimney of the cottage across the lake. The wind changes and blows from the north more often, bringing the scent of cooler weather ahead. The kitchen is piled with bags and baskets that need to be loaded into the car.
I stick my head in the cupboard to pull out the toaster for one last piece of toast before leaving. “Toast cheese,” my son calls it, when you slather the toast with that tart cheddar found in little red tubs at the grocery store.
Blowing past me in a rush of memory is that musty aroma so common in old-fashioned cottages. Some call it mouldy; I call it marvellous. With it comes a flood of memories almost 60 years old. I was a little girl in my grandparents’ simple summer cabin on the river. The mustiness of the place is there in my mind’s eye in a flash.
Old-fashioned cottaging has a long history in my family. I come by my commitment to keeping the family cottage experience alive for the next generation honestly. Before my grandparents owned a car, they owned a cottage, that simple cabin where I can vividly remember spending my ninth birthday.
One acrid but sweet smell that comes to mind when I think of that birthday is my grandfather’s offering to every summer meal. He had created a dish of sliced cucumber and red onion with a generous dose of salt and pepper, and all of it covered in vinegar – cider vinegar, I believe. Its tasty simplicity made it a family favourite, which, as part of our dinner tradition, he would present with a flourish as the last dish to be brought to the table.
Smells can create a smoky thread that weaves in and out of a whole host of memories. They catch each other, tag teaming your history markers and soon you find yourself sniffing the air for just a hint of that long-ago smell.
Smells can react on your mind so suddenly that it takes your breath away, and you inhale deeply, trying to catch the scent before it disappears again. Memories you have never given much thought to are suddenly real and vivid, and your mind races to another time.
This past summer, we had our first big family reunion in about 10 years at the cottage.
There is always some family time at the cottage each summer, but this year everyone was able to make it there at the same time. We have grown significantly over the past decade. It used to be just the three of us – my sons and me – for any summer holiday at the cottage. Now, a gaggle of grandchildren fill up the cottage spaces. With their hugs and kisses, each adds his or her own delicious smell of child and innocence. The youngest, still a baby, always has a huge smile on her face and the smell of sweet potato mushed into her hair.
Thoughts of smell remind me of a moment this past summer. I was on a laundry run to town during the family visit.
I confess to burying my face in my sons’ T-shirts that laundry day. It took me back more than 30 years, to when they were boys at home. It seems peculiar, but each son still has his very own “scent.” I can tell whose T-shirt is whose just by the smell. It reminds me of messy bedrooms that were often more mess than bedroom.
Perhaps the worst year for smell in those growing-up years was the one when my younger son played football. I used to tell him the smell in his bedroom could be causing lung damage. He didn’t seem to mind, so I looked the other way and let him live in his football-gear-strewn room. Raising kids you pick your battles was my motto. It was his bedroom and his mess. I just closed the door. We still laugh together about that infamous year.
My sons both stand a good foot taller than me now, so hugs always give me the opportunity to breathe deeply and take in the essence that is them. Every hug gets more precious with each passing year.
The cottage smells different when it is all packed up for the season. Does empty have a particular smell? It does in my cottage. It smells of all that RAM that has been added to our family life over one more summer season.
On the second day of his cottage visit this past summer, my almost-three-year-old grandson looked at his Daddy and Mummy and said, “I want to stay here forever.”
That was the sweet smell of success for a Gramma hoping to create memories to last a lifetime.
Linda Simpson lives in Brockville, Ont.