I had a weird experience yesterday morning.

I adore the scent and taste of lime. To wit, I buy some weird store brand of dish soap because it’s the only lime-scented soap I can find.

So I was washing some pots and pans yesterday with my lime-scented soap when, all of a sudden, I thought of my beloved late grandfather. I don’t know whether to describe it as a memory or a feeling, but I was very strongly reminded of him. I even teared up a bit because the scent made me miss him.

Weird, I thought. Why would lime remind me of Grandpa? It never had before.

Curious, I sent my parents an email, telling them about my experience and asking why I would associate the scent of lime with Grandpa. I don’t have any memories of him even mentioning lime, let alone favoring it, and he was the type who made sure that everyone knew exactly what he loved (raspberry tea, raisin pie, peanut brittle).

Each of my parents wrote back and said essentially the same thing — evidently, in the 1970s lime aftershave and cologne were all the rage and my grandpa had lots of it. My dad thinks the trend went out in the mid-70s, around the time I was born, but “Mom gave it to him as gifts,” said my dad, “so he probably had a backlog.”

Since I spent a lot of time on Grandpa’s lap, snuggling with him, I must have inhaled that scent countless times. The interesting part to me though is that I was clearly very young, most likely no more than 3 or 4.

It has been long understood that scent is able to trigger memories more powerfully than any other sense. The question is why?

According to an article on Scientific American.com by Rachel S. Herz, an assistant professor of psychology at Brown University, our sense of smell is “part of the limbic system and directly connect(s) with limbic structures that process emotion (the amygdala) and associative learning (the hippocampus). No other sensory system has this type of intimate link with the neural areas of emotion and associative learning, therefore there is a strong neurological basis for why odors trigger emotional connections.”

This explains why incidents like my lime soap association happen. I think we’ve all had these scent-related memory triggers, usually unexpectedly. Normally when I have these experiences though, I remember the incident or person I’m associating the scent with. In this case, I couldn’t figure out the connection because I was so young at the time my brain linked lime with my grandpa.

Our brains are truly amazing and the effect of scent on memory is, to me, one of the most fascinating facets. One of my very favorite smells is lilac because when I was a child, my parents had lilac bushes right outside their bedroom windows. In the summer, when the lilacs were in bloom and the windows were open, the whole room would fill up with their lovely scent.

Other scents guaranteed to draw memories and/or emotions from me are Pine-Sol (my crotchety great-grandmother’s house always smelled like Pine-Sol), fresh-cut grass and the way the air smells after it rains. All of these make me nostalgic for my childhood.

What scents trigger memories or emotions for you? Do most or all of your favorite scents have a link to your past?

Tags: family memories, lime scent, parenting, scents trigger memories