The Nose Knows
When I was forty-six, I discovered my sense of smell. Or rather, it discovered me, scents suddenly arriving in waves where before there might have been wafts. Why did it happen? Shifting hormones are the likely culprit, but all I know is that when the lilacs bloomed that year, the whole world turned purple. When my children walked in the door, I could tell where they’d been simply by the scents that clung to their clothes. For two weeks that spring, I chased a phantom fragrance through the house only to realize it was the smell of my own brain working.
A friend joked that I could have a new career as a tracking dog, but, to be
