I’m very good at compartmentalizing. For most of the next six months, I didn’t worry much about my looming brain surgery and loss of one and a half of my five senses. Well, maybe a bit. I realized that between the neuropathy and my age-related hearing and vision issues, smell and taste were the only senses that were still working right!

But I did have a good heart-to-heart with my sister. She shared my concern about what a complete loss of smell and the inability to taste food properly would do to my quality of life…to my mental health. (If you can believe what you read on the internet, with full loss of smell I would be able to taste the difference between salty and sweet but not actual flavors.) I mean, I’m Italian! Food is everything! She suggested I keep a “smell diary” to describe what things smell and taste like.

On a visit to her mountain house, I decided to try smellbathing. (Okay, I made that up, but it’s pretty good so I’m going to trademark it.) I relaxed in a deck chair, closed my eyes, and just smelled. At my sister’s place, the primary smell is pine trees. I’ve long said that pine is my favorite smell. At Christmas time, I always buy a bottle of pine scented hand soap. We barely put a dent in it during December so our hands smell like Christmas trees all year long.

But the best pine tree smell is the sugar pines in the Sierras above Sonora, near Pinecrest Lake – a place my family went every summer when we were growing up. Any time we drove up into the mountains, we’d open the windows when we hit the tree line. At the point the overwhelming scent of the trees hits, I could feel every bit of tension leave my body. The scent of sugar pines is my drug. If I could only smell one thing, that would be it.

So I decided to journal some smells. I relaxed and inhaled slowly and purposefully through my nose. The predominant smell was pine, earthy with a crisp, fresh, almost soapy smell. On that day, it was mixed with a light smoke from a wildfire burning 60 miles away. It smelled a bit like campfire. And dirt, which smelled warm and old. These scents blended together to bring up the best memories from my childhood summers and the week we spent at camp in the Sierras. The only thing missing was the taste of an orange creamsicle and a touch of chlorine from the camp pool.

When I went to write all this down, I realized I had a problem. It’s hard to describe a smell. It’s like trying to describe colors to someone who can’t see. To describe it, you really need to describe the memories and emotions associated with the smell and the tangible things that create the smell – like trees, dirt, smoke. I could say something smells like… or reminds me of… but either way, I’m not describing the smell. I’m going to have to rely on my memories of the things associated with the smells. I hope that will be enough.