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[resonant]

Lynn, my dental hygienist, just came home from visiting her parents -- the last visit she and her sisters get to make before their parents sell the house.

"I'd go downstairs because I wanted to look down the laundry chute one last time," she said, "and I'd find my sister there, and she'd say kind of shamefacedly, 'I wanted to look down the laundry chute one last time; isn't that silly?' One day we all went upstairs, one by one, because we all wanted one last chance to smell the broom closet."

The house I lived in from ages six to twelve was torn down several years ago; Hurricane Fran spun off several tornadoes that far inland, and a tree fell on the roof. And I don't really miss the house -- I don't even remember it all that well -- but every now and then I'll be assailed suddenly by a sense memory of the bitter smell of the ivy when we cut it so it wouldn't grow over the sidewalk.

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[dsudis.livejournal.com]

Now the next time I'm at my parents' house I'm going to wind up spending ten minutes with my head in the linen closet, because nothing else smells quite like that.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

The kidlet is always talking about what kind of house we ought to move into -- she wants a bigger room and thinks it's unbearable that our garage is detached. I wonder what she'd miss about this house if we moved out?

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

We moved when I was four, in fact, out of a Cape Cod (master bedroom and nursery upstairs, two bedrooms for me and my older brothers down), and when I - inevitably - switched from being excited to wanting nothing to do with it, my parents reminded me how I'd been looking forward to having an upstairs room in the new house. It didn't help, of course, but unpacking enough to make the bed with my familiar old bedspread did.

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

Aren't smells amazing? Have you read The Emperor of Scent by any chance? I forget the author's name, but it's a fascinating read.

I was not attached to any of the houses I lived in when I grew up really. I think the best one we lived in was in South Dakota, but I was 8 when we lived there, so what do I know?:) The one that I'm actually attached to is my grandmother's house and lucky for me, my father and uncle are waaaay more attached to it than I am. But it has a scent (or used to) that was so comforting to me. I wonder what my house smells like to people.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I'll look for that book; I'm not familiar with it.

When I was a kid, I used to get lots of hand-me-down clothes from the much older daughter of my mother's best friend. And I remember they always had this characteristic Sandra smell until they'd been through the wash several times at our house.

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

Memory is a funny thing. I spent my 8th - 9th year in my grandparent's house in Oregon. My father was stationed in Turkey and there were no schools available. Everytime I smell the fragrance of pines in the sun or hear wind through the pine trees, I am swept by a wave of sorrow for that year and how wonderful it was and how it's so far in the past.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I know! Smells are amazingly potent.

My first job took me back from college to my home state, but to a completely unfamiliar region of it, where I knew no one. I was cripplingly homesick and scared all that first summer, and then the first day it was cool enough to drive the car with the windows open, I got a whiff of an oak-and-pine forest in fall, with the leaves just beginning to come down, and it totally filled me up with home home home. And after that I was OK.

[byandby.livejournal.com]

I miss smelling my mom's quilts. Granted, I have eight of them, but they don't smell the same in my apartment.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hee! They wouldn't, would they. Everything in our own houses just smells like us.

[jack-pride.livejournal.com]

::whimpers::

My parents sold our family home on Monday night, possession at the end of the month.

And I'm moving out and into my new house tomorrow.

So I had to go climb my favourite tree in the backyard, which admittedly I haven't been up in years. Fortunately even the branches way up at the top still held!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Aww! I'm so sorry. It's hard to say goodbye to houses.

The spouse's parents just sold his childhood house; when we visit them this month, we'll be staying in the new house for the first time. I asked if he'd be sad for the old one, and he said, "I told it goodbye the last time I was there."

[cricketk.livejournal.com]

We lived in a farm house in New Zealand for five years. Three years after we moved, when I was 8, I found a key to the spare room where Mum had put all the stuff she didn't want played with. I found a tea-chest (an actual, real tea chest) filled with books. The bottom layer of books and the base of the chest were mouldy and rotting - but the box was filled with Lucy Montgomery books and the rest of Mum's childhood favourites. The smell of dusty books and rot always, always surprises me by bringing back the illicit thrill of finding hidden, precious things.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! How cool.

When I was a kid, I used to catsit for some neighbors, and they had a big sunroom full of old back issues of the New Yorker. So I associate that owners-away-on-vacation smell (dust and old cat-food cans) with sitting in that room and reading all the cartoons for hours on end while I petted their black-and-white cat named Gypsy.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

My parents have lived in their house since 1973. In the event they ever move -- which they'll only do if, like, one of them can absolutely not handle stairs anymore -- I will also be that sort of messed up.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Stairs were the big reason my parents eventually sold the house I lived in as a teenager, and the reason the spouse's parents just moved. I hope your parents have a good long time to stay in their house.

[soho-iced.livejournal.com]

The house I grew up in (ages 1 to 20) was sold shortly after I left home and my parents moved away. It's still there, but the people who bought it gutted and renovated it to within an inch of its life, then got some housekeeping magazine to run an article on it. They kept going on about how they'd worked miracles and how dingy and tasteless it had been before they bought it, even though we'd been doing it up for years because selling it was the bulk of my parents' pension plan. That was pretty painful.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, cold! That was really rude of them.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Rl gorgeousity. :-)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

[beams at you]