Faith, Folklore, and Friends

They say that our olfactory sense is the last to go; that up 'til the end when our memories of names and faces and places are gone, we can remember certain smells.  I can instantly remember the smell of burning leaves, the richness of a plowed field after a summer rain, and potatoes frying in a skillet.  I can remember the smell of mimeograph machine ink from fifty years ago, and the Vick's salve that Mama rubbed on our throats.  I remember waking up to the smell of coffee and bacon cooking every morning of my childhood.  Nothing smelled as good as honeysuckle. We knew it was spring then, when we played outside by the porch light and our bare feet got slick with dew, and it was like being in a perfume factory with the wild honeysuckle blooming along fence rows and road sides.  Later, when we were dating, we rode those country roads with the car windows down, listening to music with the smell of honeysuckle intensifying the young love being born. In the late 1800s,

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain  is  over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth;  the  time of the singing of birds is  come,  and  the voice of the turtle is heard in  our  land;   The fig tree putteth forth her  green  figs, and the vines with the tender  grape give a good smell. Arise, my  love,  my fair one, and come away. ~Song of Solomon 2:11-13