What is your experience with the relationship between scent, memory, and emotion?

Margie seems to have inherited Rasha's propensity for smelling. What is your experience with the relationship between scent, memory, and emotion?

Certain scents, like certain music, have remained with me as memory boosts for my entire life. I still love the scent of Brut and British Sterling aftershaves/colognes - most popular with young men when I was in high school and went to dances. The scent brings back that feeling of anticipatory excitement that comes from having a new, nice guy asking for a dance. I get the same reaction from some of the music that was played at those late 1960s events.

I also have a fondness for the smell of garlic/cilantro/fish sauce - found in Lao, Cambodian, and Vietnamese food. This order emanated from SE Asian students that I taught English as a Second Language to in the 1970s and 1980s. Because I truly enjoyed what I was doing and also really liked my students, this odor brings back many fond, fond memories of people I used to know.

On the negative side, I had a bad family experience while serving pancakes with maple syrup and now, more than 20 years later I still dislike the smell of syrup. It nearly turns my stomach.

Different perfumes/aftershaves remind me of the people I know/knew that wore them. Smells of food cooking, the air after a summer rain, chimney smoke and my grandbaby just after his bath all remind me of things I love. When undergoing chemtherapy for cancer certain smells and sights would instantly make me nauseous.

I went to a small high school and the graduation was outdoors on a beautiful lawn area surrounded by trees and flowers. Everything seemed in bloom and I remember thinking: "I will probably forget many things that happen today, but I will always remember the perfume of these flowers, and I do! Whenever I want to relax, I can evoke that peace and happiness and recall that scent.