Last Friday, I was wrapping up a Zoom call in my kitchen with my daughter Harper asleep in my arms. As the call ended, Harper started wiggling awake. I put my nose to her head—her softly matted hair still warm with sleep—and inhaled deeply. At the same time, my mom walked into the room.
“This is random,” I said to her, “but what is your favorite smell?” She paused, hip against the counter, and gestured to the sleepy baby in my arms: “It’s that. You know that when I smell Harper, I smell you.”
I’ve been told that the “new baby smell” doesn’t last forever, but every mother knows it, and carries it with them for the rest of their lives. Harper’s smell has enveloped me in a way I can’t even put into words.
Courtesy Hailee Steinfeld
“If you could bottle it up…” my mom says, trailing off. “There’s nothing like it.” Even the most ordinary smells have always carried deep memories for me. I can still remember snack time in preschool, my teacher handing me a Dixie cup filled with animal crackers that felt like a vanilla lemony treasure.
Every time I smell lipstick, I think about my grandma, who always reapplied hers throughout the day. Hay bales and horse feed remind me of True Grit, my first film set, where everything was new. When I think of love, I think about a few Tuesdays ago, when my husband, Josh, came home, hugged me—a comforting musk that instantly puts me at ease—then pulled from behind his back a bouquet of red roses wrapped in brown butcher paper and twine.
Roses—red, white, and crystal—will always remind me of our wedding in Montecito. We toured the venue holding hands, walking through the rose gardens, past the lemon trees and sprawling pink bougainvilleas, and knew immediately that it was our place. Less than six months later, on an early summer day, in front of our closest friends and family, we walked through those same gardens, down an aisle lined with the whitest roses I’ve ever seen, inhaling that verdant earth and fresh salty ocean air, and committed to spend forever with each other.
Courtesy Hailee Steinfeld
