Yesteday I wrote about the sweet fragrance of grace. Today in Tuesday's Time To, I thought I would carry on this theme, and write about scents!
Our sense of smell is a very important gift. There are too many different scents in the world to be able to number - and our ability to distinguish between them allows us to make many different inferences and choices. Scent is also an important aspect of our emotional make-up too. Scents can be part of memories; they can tell us whether we are with someone (or something) familiar. They can bring us great pleasure - and we are happy to spend a lot of money on scents that make us feel wonderful too! Scents can be complicated too ... think of the scent of cinnamon rolls or spice cookies baking, and how it makes you feel - that mixture of cosiness, nostalgia, excitement and peace, which is the combination of all the different remembered feelings we have about Christmas, or feeling good when we were young. They can arouse more than just one feeling, and some scents have many different layers to them too. Perfumes are designed with different "notes" that develop over the time that the wearer has it on, and it will smell different at different times of day as a result.
Without any sense of smell, it would be harder to determine if food was safe to eat or not - and it certainly helps to enhance our sense of appetite too. It's a unique gift as well because everyone's sense of smell is slightly different, and what smells great to one person might not smell so good to another. When I was expecting Cubby Bear, my pregnancy cravings were not for food, as they had been with Little Bear (for broccoli and red delicious apples - not on the same plate!). With Cubby, my cravings were for the smell of washing powder! I would sit on the floor by our washing machine with Little Bear, holding the box of washing powder in my lap and sniffing it! I found it absolutely irresistible! When Cubby was born of course, the craving went away, and though I do still like the scent of washing powder, I dont' need to sit and sniff the box any more! I don't know what Little Bear thought as she sat in her wee cradleseat and watched me! To this day she adores broccoli and red apples, but I can't say I've noticed Cubby having any srong leanings towards the scent of washing powder! Anyway, here are my Tuesday's Time To thoughts on fragrance ...
A Time To Plant ...
The scent of plants is very evocative. There are so many gorgeous ones it's hard to know where to begin. Growing up on the borders of North East England and Scotland, one of my favourite plant scents is that of bracken. It has a beautiful, woody aroma which instantly transports me to some of my most loved places in England, and makes me think of the rough, craggy hills that were just beyond the boundaries of the farm where I lived. I loved walking up through the huge jagged rocks, to where water would fall between them, clear and icy cold. All along the path the bracken would grow, and it would form a soft blanket on the ground beneath my feet in Autumn. I miss that landscape now - we live in a much flatter part of England - but I know the crags and fells are still there for me, whenever we go to visit our family that still lives there.
A Time To Heal ...
There are so many healing scents! Many herbs, such as peppermint, chamomile, raspberry leaf and licquorice, are beautifully scented and used in natural medicine. I like the aroma of olbas oil, a mixture of essential oils that we use as an inhalant and decongestant when we have colds or sinusitis. And I also love the scent of clove oil which use to be used for toothache - but which I now add a drop of to my duster when I am doing housework. It lends a fresh, clean aroma to the room as I work. People often say that they don't like the scent of disinfectant because it reminds them of hospitals, but I have to say that neither do I dislike the scent of disinfectant, and nor does it remind me of hospitals, in which I have spent more than my fair share of time over the years! I actually quite like the scent of disinfectant!
A Time To Laugh ...
I also like scents that lift my heart and make me smile and feel happy. In the 1990's, Elizabeth Arden brought out a perfume called "Sunflowers", which came packaged in a bright yellow box.
One day when Papa Bear came home from work, he presented me with a bag from a fancy department store in town, and inside it was a cute wee yellow jumper dress for Little Bear, matching yellow dungaree shorts for Cubby, and a bottle of the "Sunflowers" perfume for me! I can remember feeling so happy and loved when I took out the gifts my sweet husband had bought me! And do you know, that perfume smelled of summer! The yellow clothes were perfect for that perfume - we were all three of us bathed in sunshine every time we wore our gifts - and Papa Bear's smile when he saw us was enough to make all our hearts warm!
A Time To Embrace ...
Who can resist snuggling their new baby! I am certain that there's absolutely nothing else in the world that smells quite as precious as a newborn baby and which can make us feel quite as warm and nurturing and loving. When our children were babies, I loved just drinking in their gorgeous aroma. I can't even begin to describe it - just that it was the most perfect scent in all the world! Whenever I held anyone else's baby, they did not smell to me quite so lovely as my own children did! Just scrumptious! Of course, husbands smell delicious too in quite another way! When Papa Bear and I were first married I use to buy him aftershave as a gift on birthdays and at Christmas - but do you know, I love his "real" smell just as much as the aftershave! And even our birds, who I love but don't adore like I do my family - well, their feathers smell gorgeous too - warm and sweet.
A Time To Keep ...
As I say above, scent is a very important element in evoking memory. Some of my happiest memories are aroused by scent - not just the smell of bracken, but many others too - the smell of the dairy cows that were raised on the farm, which is not unpleasant at all, but a wonderful earthy, grassy aroma - the smell of hay - the scent of putty or woodshavings when my dad was doing repairs around the farm buildings - even the rough aroma of the tobacco that the other farm hands smoked in their pipes. All these aromas are of my childhood. At different times of year, there were different scents - the smell of warm tarmac in summer when we played hopscotch and skipping outside, then the wonderful piny scent of Christmas trees in winter! There was the smell of the hyacinths that my mam grew in pots on the windowsill in spring, and in Autumn, wonderful smells of preserving and baking in preparation for the colder months. All my childhood memories are stored in different scents - and I'm sure most other people's are too - just have a think about it now and see what you can remember!
A Time To Sew ...
Now I wonder if you thought "there can't be any scent associated with sewing"? He he! Well there is one! It's a scent I absolutely adore, too. The smell of my sewing machine, when it has been running all afternoon. It's a sort of engine smell, a bit like a steam engine but not anything like as powerful, which is probably caused by the motor getting hot as I use it. I can't describe why I like this smell, but I do - it's the same sort of smell as that of the ink used on printed glossy magazines and brochures, which I also like! He he! What's your strangest favourite scent?
A Time To Speak ...
Of course, scents speak for us. A gift of perfume says "I love you". The aroma of baking bread or cookies says "I care", and the warm fragrance of a roast dinner or casserole says "welcome home". Freshly squeezed orange juice tells my family "rise and shine!" and clean bedlinen says "sweet dreams". Making our homes smell lovely is another way in which we can give a powerful message to our families and to all those who visits our homes, that says, I am taking my role as a homemaker seriously - I want to please God and make my family feel happy and loved - and I'm going to embrace every sense in so doing. It's easy to start thinking of ways we can achieve this - just a few scented candles, or a vase of freesias will lend a sweet fragrance to your home, and make everyone who enters it feel glad to be there.
A Time To Love ...
Roses are of course the bloom that speaks of love - and their scent does too. It is a dream and hope of Papa Bear and I that one day we will again have a garden of our very own, where maybe we can plant some roses of our own. My favourite sort of roses are the big, soft, double-petalled ones that come in every shade, from the palest shell pink to the deepest crimson, with every colour inbetween. Grandmama Bear has some wonderful roses in her garden, some of which are very ancient species, and one in particular is the most beautiful delicate creamy pink colour, almost a soft creamy-coffee, and it has the deepest, loveliest scent, like all other roses distilled into one. I may not yet be able to enjoy such beautiful gifts as a garden of roses of my own - but I do have beautiful bubble baths that are scented almost as delightfully, every evening - thanks to my sweet Papa Bear!
A Time For Peace ...
There can only be one scent for me that makes me think of peace - and which stills my heart whenever I feel restless or anxious - and that is the scent of lavender. It's one of my very favourite scents of all, always calming - in fact I've discovered that a few drops of lavender essential oil on our pillows at bedtime ensure we all get a good night's sleep! When I feel a migraine coming on, I massage a little lavender oil into my temples, and I also use it to scent the water in my steam iron, so that all our laundry smells gorgeous too.
The world is full of so many wonderful things that our Father God has provided us with! I thank Him today for giving us five senses with which to enjoy His beautiful world - and for so many scents to delight us with!
