Of Mothers and Memory

Scent has a way of getting in quietly – threading itself through the gaps in memory, stirring something you didn’t know was sleeping. It’s not loud or insistent. It just arrives and suddenly you’re somewhere else. Somewhere familiar.

Lemon myrtle does that. Sharp, bright and clean – like early light on worn floorboards. For some of us, it brings back mornings in kitchens where nothing much happened, but everything mattered. Tea steeping, sunlight hitting a chipped mug just so, the steady rhythm of her moving through the kitchen. You didn’t need words. The scent was enough.

Garden rose is gentler. Faded floral on the air, like something remembered more than seen. It lingers in rooms long after she’s left them. It’s there in the garden bed she kept going, year after year. In the pressed bloom you found tucked inside a cookbook. In the way she closed the curtains just before dusk, letting the scent hang a little longer in the air.

Then there’s wild quince – rounded, golden, just this side of sweet. It holds the weight of afternoons and old rituals. Trays of fruit left to soften and perfume the linen cupboard. The slow kind of domestic magic, passed down in gestures rather than instructions. The kind of care that seeps in over time.

These scents don’t just smell good. They carry something. They remind us of the women who shaped us – mothers and grandmothers, aunties and elders – not with declarations or grand gestures, but with the steady repetition of small, beautiful things. The ones who taught us how to make a home feel like a shelter.

The essence of her isn’t always easy to name. But when the scent rises, you’ll know it. And you’ll remember.