In a suburban farmers market filled with elderly couples choosing between cheeses and Amish butchers, I pick up a spring of fresh mint at a produce table. One quick inhale and I’m torn back to childhood, not to a specific day, but through the years like in a science fiction wormhole through time. My nose belongs to six-year old me, holding the leaves from my mother’s garden, myself, in long socks and overalls, in pigtails and roller skates.

Only a few scents can push me through time like that. My grandmother’s perfume, not smelled in real life for maybe 20 years, but remembered deep in my brain. The smell of sun-baked sheets. Certain sun lotion. Deep in my brain I have these scents connected with my childhood, and though they are good memories, they bring tears to my eyes now. Those days went so fast; I am on the other end of my life from them, and they seem sweeter for being almost untouchable.

Like the scent of fresh mint, the colors of Goodnight Moon, bold orange and blue, send me through my own years. Reading the board book with my daughters, all grown now, and yet within my minds eye, close enough to touch. And with my own mother, being the bunny in the striped pajamas who has to say goodnight to all of the very important things he sees around him. The bowl, the painting, the old lady. I am closer now to being the Old Lady whispering hush, but I remember who I was, in hints and glances with the scent of mint and in the pages of a beloved book.