October air

Yesterday, Holly arranged our modest (and motley) collection of Halloween decorations around the house: paper-bag pumpkins on the front table, ceramic witch’s hat by the front door, plastic ghost reflector hanging from the upstairs banister. I made pumpkin cupcakes for our company dessert last night, and this afternoon we’re planning to buy pumpkins at McGrath’s farmstand; we’ll carve them in another few days and roast the seeds. Earlier today a friend invited us to her yearly pre-trick-or-treating party . Halloween is unmistakably close by.

There is something so distinctive to me about the cold, clear autumn air at this time of year. Nothing smells to me quite like home, or childhood memories, like the cold nights of mid-autumn in Carlisle. I can smell leaves, and hay, and frost. Even moonlight, though I know moonlight doesn’t really have a smell. But there’s no other time of year whose aroma says “home” to me the way October does. And even though I know it’s not specific to Carlisle city limits, I so strongly associate the cold nighttime smell with this town; when we lived in Framingham, I would sometimes find myself saying at this time of year, “It smells like Carlisle on Halloween, doesn’t it?”

Hometowns do have specific scents. There’s the cold autumn night smell here, and the dank, humid, late-August afternoon smell that reminds me of getting home from summer vacation and thinking about the onset of a new school year. And there’s an early spring smell, when the snow starts melting. And a first-snowfall scent.

I’ve never lived far from here, but even living somewhere else close by, I’ve had the experience of a smell in the air that reminded me of home. And now, living right where I grew up, I can still detect it: a flavor in the air that tells me exactly where I am, and reminds me that this is where I’ve been for a very long time.