Memory of spring

Autumn has started. You can smell it when you go outside.

In a forgotten corner of my storage room I found a box with old memories. Scents I caught 20 years ago when I had just started art school. The biggest one reads “voorjaar”, spring. The scent is gone though. Once there was freshly cut grass in it. Now it smells of decay. Of autumn before it turns winter.
“A dear friend”, “my love”, “grandmother”. The scents are still there, faintly, but the people who used those perfumes or soaps smell different now. Or not at all.
“Terschelling, the summer of ’89”, “Saterday afternoons a long time ago”, “my first job”, “Domaine de Merlac 1990”. Hard to recognise.
“Fishing nets made out of lace curtain” (there was muddy water inside), “for the love of cats” (liver, if I remember well: my mother used to cook it for our pets), all gone.
The strong smell of “Molenweg 29” is still there. The smell of the impregnated beams my father put in the front garden. Whenever I smell that, I am back there.
And the one reading "Opa", "Grandfather", still smells of what is inside. Earth. When I was little I used to work in the garden with him. I still love gardening. And the smell of earth.