Dear Leta,
One of my favorite smells is cigarette smoke. I know this
sounds weird, but hear me out.
The smell reminds me of my grandpa, who died when I was in
high school. We’d go visit him and my grandma at their cabin in northern
Wisconsin, where the smell of cigarettes mixed with those of sunscreen, ferns,
and fireworks. I remember standing near
him while he poured lighter fluid on an unlit campfire and telling my cousins
and me to back up and not tell Grandma about this before lighting a match and
throwing it on the pyre. His smile would wink at us as he offered fifty cents
to any child who could use the same plastic cup for the entire weekend. (Make
sure you write your name on it in Sharpie and put it somewhere safe so the
grown-up don’t throw it away). We would lie face down on the deck trying to
catch crayfish with a net while he smoked and cast for bluegills, fish and
smoke and moss and water.
It reminds me of London, where I studied abroad in college.
Coming out of a theater at night, buzzed from the performance, making my way
through the crowd of smokers on the way to the Tube. Or lying on the grass in
Kensington Gardens, dozing over my homework, listening to teenagers play rugby
and smelling the cigarettes of the businessmen on the bench across the path.
I’ve read that smell is the sense most associated with
memory. Being transported to a favorite
time and place just by catching a whiff of a hipster’s American Spirit is one
of the best things about the human brain that I can think of. Now I’ve never
been a smoker, and I don’t plan on ever picking up the habit, but when I walk
by someone smoking a cigarette I breathe in deep to remember lakes and cities.
Love,
Gena
