Revives.

Steve points to the importance of sense memory ...

I fear the effects of the loss of sensory experiences of reality that bind us to our own lives and to the lives of other people. Imagine the children of climate-change-obsessed parents, one of whom refuses to fly to other places, the other of whom shuns eating anything more sensually evocative than seaweed. What palpable constituent of the world will bring these kids back to the song of themselves as they go through life? What intimate tangible quality of their lives will they carry with them and cherish? The ancient Egyptians perfumed their mummies and buried them with sweet-smelling jars of fruit and beeswax, no doubt so that, if the dead had the good fortune to make their way into the afterlife, familiar smells would keep their personalities as intact as their bodies.

You could gather them with a thousand other women, blindfold me, and I could find (both) my grandmas just by the scent of the perfume in their hair.  Their kitchens also had unique aromas.  The Welsh signaled a welcome with richly-buttered toasts, cinnamon-sugar, and teas; the German, a bass line of hams, sausages, sauerkraut, and, seemingly always, the cookies -- singing the bright soprano of anise and powdered sugar.  Bit-O-Honey everywhere -- in dishes, in golf bags, in sweater and "windbreaker" pockets.

Pipe smoke from both grandpas and an uncle. Dunhill Navy, Prince Albert, and Borkum Riff Whiskey.

Pine trees, freshwater lakes, and two-cycle outboard exhaust.  The sound of a plastic tackle box placed in the bottom of an aluminum jon boat.  The halyard gently tapping the flagpole in the background.

My Dad's wooden shoeshine kit.

Charcoal blazing in a Weber, the creak of lawn chairs unfolding, and listening to the Tigers' game on WJR, ("The Great Voice of The Great Lakes"), all with the lasting taste of a "sip" of beer in my nine year-old mouth (it's never tasted as good).

The pop of pine burning in a fire pit.

Birdsong.

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

Vladimir Nabokov