Scent bonds mothers to their children

Driving past a lush, green field near my house, I saw a mare and her foal standing quietly in tall grass that moved gently with the wind. The leggy, newly born foal was pressed close to his mother, and she was curled into him, nuzzling his coat.

I experienced a flash of pure envy and longing. It’s been a long time since I breathed in the scent of a newborn. But I imagine that what I felt was no different from what the horse experienced. Something deep within us both said, “This is mine.”

I noticed after the birth of each of my children, after the squalling infant was passed from the delivering physician, to the nurse who handed each to their father who brought them to me, that once they were in my arms, tucked-in close, there was a change. The wriggling, crying, baby relaxed and pressed against me as if to say, “Well, there you are.” The smell of my skin was new, yet inexplicably familiar to them. As theirs was to me.

In that moment we imprinted, each to the other, deeply and permanently.

The first days and weeks together as mother and child were spent cocooned, heart-to-heart, their face against me and my face lowered to them.

When my children were small, I often thought that if I were put in a room, blindfolded, I could pick my babies out of a crowd by recognizing their unique scent. And, I was sure, they could find me.

I still remember the last time my mother comforted me, almost 30 years ago, drying my tears by pulling me into her arms. I buried my face in the place where her neck curved into her shoulder and recognized, viscerally, the fragrance. I was home.

For years, my end-of-the day ritual was to stand beside the beds of my children as they slept, and then bend to lay my cheek against theirs, inhaling deeply the sweet perfume of a sleeping child.

I still do it whenever I can.

But, now, when I get the chance for an embrace, I search quickly for the scent I associate with each one of them, before they can move away. Sadly, with my teenagers, I confess that I sometimes scan the air for other telltale things – evidence of choices I don’t want them to make – clinging to their clothes and hair. Things I don’t want to find.

All I want is a trace of the baby that has grown up.

Late one afternoon, not long ago, my youngest child waved to me as I turned my car into the driveway, home from work at last. She ran across the lawn, leaping over flower beds and the silly dogs that were racing and tumbling along beside her, straight into my arms.

Squeezing my waist, she rubbed her face into my blouse. “Mmm,” she sighed, and looked up at me with a smile, “My mama.”

We stood there for a few minutes as I returned the hug, brushing my cheek across the sweaty head of a little girl who smelled like new-mown grass, sunscreen and other unidentifiable things.

And, just as the other mother standing silently in a field nearby had done, I nuzzled my child. “Mine,” I thought. “Mine.”