The Smell of My Aunts Old House (lol) -Paige De Giovanni
When I was younger, my aunt (and her family) lived in Virginia. Over summers and Easters, my mom would take me and my sisters down to visit them.
I have very faint memories from this time. Their house had a small elevator which I rode in a total of one time due to my mom most likely telling me I'm too young to ride the elevator by myself and faint fever dream memories of a very small ice-skating rink?? (I'm not too positive on this one)
They had alphabet magnets in their basement by a workout room and two cats. I recall being jealous of their luxuries but more importantly by the fact that they had alphabet magnets on their fridge and my family's small house in Rutherford didn't. To this day we still don't own alphabet magnets and honestly, I'm quite mad about it.
Above all else, however, the one thing I do remember without fault is the smell of their large Virginia house. The memories I have of their house are very faint but the smell of their house I can remember perfectly.
Their house smelt of cool summer air, the type of air at night over the month of July where you can open all the windows in your house and keep your fans on without having to turn on the air conditioning.
Although this smell may sound like a generic summer night, no late-night summer smell I've experienced can compare to the smell of their home.
No summer smell can take me back to the days of long car rides to Virginia and catching frogs with my cousins in the nighttime (my cousins caught me a frog for my birthday once while we were visiting and it PEED ON ME).
No summer smell could be compared, and sadly, the smell cannot be recreated (I've tried).
The summer before second grade, I made the executive decision to steal a boy's skimboard and tried to use it for myself. This resulted in me breaking my wrist.
When I got back home from the hospital, my sisters tried to make me feel better by attempting to make my room smell like my aunt's Virginia house by turning my fan on a super high volume and shutting my door. Although this kinda worked, it didn't give me the happy fulfillment of smelling their actual house for myself.
Since then, I've never smelt a smell that made me feel the nostalgia of being back in their Virginia house. My aunt and her family have since moved back to New Jersey and their house never smelt the same again.
Because I can't smell the smell again, writing about it will have to suffice.
I have very faint memories from this time. Their house had a small elevator which I rode in a total of one time due to my mom most likely telling me I'm too young to ride the elevator by myself and faint fever dream memories of a very small ice-skating rink?? (I'm not too positive on this one)
They had alphabet magnets in their basement by a workout room and two cats. I recall being jealous of their luxuries but more importantly by the fact that they had alphabet magnets on their fridge and my family's small house in Rutherford didn't. To this day we still don't own alphabet magnets and honestly, I'm quite mad about it.
Above all else, however, the one thing I do remember without fault is the smell of their large Virginia house. The memories I have of their house are very faint but the smell of their house I can remember perfectly.
Their house smelt of cool summer air, the type of air at night over the month of July where you can open all the windows in your house and keep your fans on without having to turn on the air conditioning.
Although this smell may sound like a generic summer night, no late-night summer smell I've experienced can compare to the smell of their home.
No summer smell can take me back to the days of long car rides to Virginia and catching frogs with my cousins in the nighttime (my cousins caught me a frog for my birthday once while we were visiting and it PEED ON ME).
No summer smell could be compared, and sadly, the smell cannot be recreated (I've tried).
The summer before second grade, I made the executive decision to steal a boy's skimboard and tried to use it for myself. This resulted in me breaking my wrist.
When I got back home from the hospital, my sisters tried to make me feel better by attempting to make my room smell like my aunt's Virginia house by turning my fan on a super high volume and shutting my door. Although this kinda worked, it didn't give me the happy fulfillment of smelling their actual house for myself.
Since then, I've never smelt a smell that made me feel the nostalgia of being back in their Virginia house. My aunt and her family have since moved back to New Jersey and their house never smelt the same again.
Because I can't smell the smell again, writing about it will have to suffice.
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| Kind of unrelated but this is a throwback photo of the last time I went to Virginia in 2017! Sadly, my cousins were already living in New Jersey when this photo was taken so I wasn't able to visit them and smell their house. |
Yooooooooooo I know exactly what you're talking about. My grandparents lived in a super old house in New Hampshire and it smelled rank but I've never smelled anything like it
ReplyDeleteYeah! I'll probably never smell of their house again, nothing can compare!
DeleteIt's honestly wack that houses have distinct smells. Like, I know my own house has "a smell" but I'll never know what it is because I'm so accustomed to it and it's going to drive me crazy for the rest of my life.
ReplyDeleteSo true! I'll never know what my house smells like because i'm "nose blind" to it and that's wack!
DeleteYou should ask for some of those alphabet magnets for Christmas! But this was great! There' a line in a song where he sings about a certain smell takes him back to his childhood and he wishes he could make a candle out of it - this reminds me of that!
ReplyDeleteI read this to my mom and she claims we owned alphabet magnets for a fact but they're no where in my memory! I should get some for Christmas!
DeleteThis honestly made me laugh because I Love that summer smell as well and thought I was the only one.
ReplyDelete