The Smell of Nostalgia

You’ve probably had an experience where a wave of nostalgia or emotion washed over you as you took a bite of your grandma’s cooking or smelled the air outside after some rainy weather. This isn’t surprising considering that smell  and memory are closely linked. That bite you took out of your grandma’s best dish? That whiff of wet earth you took after it rained? Both of these probably trigger some fond childhood memories of sitting down with your family to have a meal at your grandma’s house or cozying up in bed under a blanket and listening to the patter of raindrops against your window.   Recently, I glanced over to the world literature books sitting on my shelf and recalled a particularly memorable selection my classmates and I had once read. It was from “ À la recherche du temps perdu,” or Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust. In it, Proust details his experience with this wave of nostalgia after enjoying some cake and tea: “…at the very instant when the mouth...