The power of place and childhood memories
I was recently asked to disclose my first clear childhood memory and whether it related to smell.
A family member has recently been made president of a community garden in a suburb of Sydney’s inner west. A local primary school has given up a paddock for the estate and everyone is digging in, as it were, including students as young as five, their parents and grandparents, and neighbours up and down the street. I’m sure there are many similar examples across Australia but to me it’s a revelation.
I was recently asked, among guests around a dinner table, to disclose my first clear childhood memory and whether it related to smell.
Luckily there was time, between a lot of related banter, to come up with my answer. The damp woolly smell of our Westie terrier, Jock, I replied, in winter on a rainy night at the cinema. Eyebrows were raised. A drive-in? No, a plain old English picture-house where dogs were allowed and the usherettes put out water bowls up and down the aisle. I always had an aisle seat and Jock was tied to its leg. Another guest hastily cut in with her story, as clearly I must be barking mad.
But it’s true and now after visiting my stepdaughter’s community garden, I realise another powerful memory has been awoken. And that’s of my father taking me to our allotment in Wimbledon, before we moved to Surrey and acquired lawns and flower beds. It’s the smell of rich, wormy earth and greenness, which I have always imagined, unlike other colours, has a defining, fecund odour all its own.
So while hearing at the Sydney plot about “Food Scraps Friday” and the benefits of composting, all I could think of was Dad in an old tweed jacket and a floppy hat and me being entrusted with a trowel, the soporific buzz of summer bees, and tea taken in sturdy Thermos cups.
Travel can be the most nostalgic of pastimes, too, even when a destination is first encountered. Deja vu is an overworked term but it does exist and is potent. We may think we’ve been to a place before, even though we know that’s not possible.
I remember walking streets in a French village years ago and instinctively knowing the turns.
I phoned Dad and asked if we’d ever holidayed there as a family when I was very small. Nope. I knew I hadn’t been to my stepdaughter’s garden until my recent visit but my mind told me otherwise.
That awakening of memories and the giddy scent and aura of times past can be spooky but also enriching.
I close my eyes and know Jock would have always been with us on the weekly allotment visits, chasing birds and investigating curious smells up and down the garden.