Pumpkin Pie, Perfume or Popcorn?

It's Thanksgiving morning, you walk into the kitchen and spot the pumpkin pie cooling on the counter, you peek in the oven to glimpse the turkey browning with it's juices flowing, you lift the towel over the bowl where the dough is rising to later make Grandma's homemade clover rolls. Everything looks perfect, but one thing is definitely missing.  There are no smells, no pungent nutmeg smell from the pumpkin pie, no delicious scents from those juices oozing from the turkey that later provide the base for that incredible mouth-watering gravy.   Can you imagine a Thanksgiving day without your sense of smell or for that matter any other day without your sense of smell?

I wonder if we tend to take our five senses of Smell, Taste, Touch, See, and Hear for granted. Each are gifts waiting for unwrapping to enjoy each and everyday.  And how even one sense, like smell would affect our day to day living with its absence.  Pause and think about your sense of smell and how you would sorely miss it if it suddenly disappeared.  No longer able to smell the freshness of the air after a spring rain, just cut mowed grass in the summer, or leaves burning in the fall.  Chili simmering on the stove, cookies baking in the oven, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.  Linens dried on a clothesline now covering your pillow with it's outdoor freshness, bubble baths, lotions, scented candles, a vase filled with roses.  The list continues.

As my Mother aged, she lost her sense of smell.  No longer could she smell the Windsong perfume that she would dab on her wrists each morning, no longer could she enjoy the aroma of the food she prepared for dinner, or the flowers she received on her birthday.  It was a loss that she woefully missed.  Sometimes I get a whiff of Windsong perfume and reminiscences of my Mom flood my memories.

Odors such as gasoline fumes, an agitated skunk, rotten eggs, or fresh manure I can live without. But don't take away the mouth-watering aroma of buttered popcorn as I enter the movie theater, fresh baked bread from the local bakery, or the heady smell of lilacs blooming in the spring.  This sense is a gift that is easily taken for granted, not realizing how much this gift would be missed until it was lost.

This week stop and think about your sense of smell.  Share with us what smells make you happy, bring back a memory, or what aroma would you miss the most?  Capture a picture of a favorite smell and post it on our new Flickr group "Focusing on Life."

"Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived."  ~  Helen Keller