Discovering Scent

A smell is a powerful thing. It can scare you away from milk that's too old, it warn you of a fire, it can make you smile as you touch a t-shirt that has your boyfriend's smell. A smell is a powerful thing.

Noah never had a sense of smell. There have been a lot of theories on the matter, from genetics (his dad has smelling difficulties, too) to birth trauma. Whatever the cause, there seemed to be little we could do about it. A neurologist once said, "Oh, that's interesting," and left it at that. Um, thanks for the helpful input, doctor.

A strange thing happened, though, when Noah and I were working on his science fair project a few months ago. We were using this heavy-duty, kill-your-brain-cells kind of glue to put fins on his little rockets, and, it took about twenty minutes or so for him to process anything, but finally, out of the blue, Noah said, "What's that smell!!??" as he clutched his nose in horror. He smelled the glue!

He didn't have any other smell responses, though . . . that is, until the past couple weeks.

Within the past two weeks, Noah has been grossed out by the smell of coffee, gasoline, and my nail polish. And then, today . . .

I was vacuuming, as I do at least twice a day to keep up with the damage the boys do to the living room, and I happened to use some vanilla-scented carpet sprinkles this time. Noah stopped me mid-vacuum. "Does that have a smell?" he asked.

"Yes . . . can you smell it?"

"I can! That smells gooo-ood!" he beamed.

My child can smell. The only thing I can figure is that a year of sensory integration therapy is having an impact. I'm glad, for safety reasons, that he can now smell noxious things and get away from danger. But my heart is even more glad that he smelled a beautiful thing for the first time today. I love that my son will someday be able to smell a perfume in a crowd and be reminded of his girlfriend's scent, or smell cookies baking and be able to anticipate tasting them. I love that my son can smell.