I was reading Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, as you know, and it's so amazing. I notice that he describes over and over again the Linden trees in Paris, in Germany. I don't know what Linden trees are, or why this detail sticks out. I'm barely able to identify the most basic of trees, usually, and I often read mostly for plot and not symbolism. But for some reason, I notice the linden references, and briefly wonder about them, briefly wonder if they are like Proust's madeleines, some special key to memory:
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on change whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
And no, I have not read all of Remembrance of Things Past. I tried. I couldn't do it. But I think Proust's point there--and why this passage has become cultural shorthand--is because memories are so often locked away for us in our material experience of the world rather than in a narrative form. They recover things for us we didn't know we had lost, or in the case of All the Light, things that are precious but soon to be lost. For Proust, cookies, for Walter Benjamin, books, for Doerr's book, lindens. For Doerr himself, pebbles.
Smells are where my memories are.
Lindens have a strong smell. Particular. Lush. I know this now because just days after I finished Doerr's book I was wandering the deeply satisfying aisles of the co-op. I had a few extra minutes and so meandered the self-care area, picking up bottles, weighing them, all those promises of responsible beauty and health, glowing skin, purity, rich plant pigments, musk. One set of beautiful bottles caught my eye and I went over to touch, to smell. Perfumes. Gorgeous, all of them.
One of them: Linden.
That smell put me right back on the sidewalk outside the restaurant where I worked in grad school in Claremont, California. Evening, after my shift. The nights must have been warming up, and summer was coming, and I was free and outside and young and totally full of possibility. Growing up, I rarely left the ten-block radius surrounding my house unaccompanied. So to be outside, at night, alone, independent...it was thrilling. It was leaving on an airplane by myself. It was packing up my car and moving to another state. It was me doing this, whatever you think about it.
Don't get me wrong. My twenties were terrible too. They were filled with bad decisions and heartbreak and poorly handled responsibilities and inadvisable life choices. But they were also punctuated with glorious moments like this one, on the sidewalk, at the start of summer, looking up at the stars, breathing in linden, citrus, sage.
I smelled my wrist again, there in the aisle of the grocery store.
And: though I can't prove it, though I could be making this up, that smell also took me to my great-grandmother's backyard. Lilac does too, but linden...light filtering through shrubs and tall bushes. Lazy dust motes. Digging in the dirt. Her reading in an aluminum chair. I could have been six or seven? Was there really a linden tree there? Could there have been?
Finally, this morning--I'm reading the most recent issue of Orion Magazine, an essay, worth reading in full, aptly titled "Naming Happiness":
One Saturday morning while we walked that waterside path, my mind straying, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Something random, or so it seemed, had trespassed into this highly ordered landscape. It was a falling leaf, riding a gentle, spiraling current to the ground, scuttling to a stop. It was yellow and freckled with brown. The edges curled upward. It looked sort of like an elfin canoe.
A linden leaf. Tilia america. I know this only because I looked it up.
I know any of this only because of Doerr, and that little detail that emerged from the power of that book, and then the chance happening upon the perfume bottle, and then this Orion essay, which deals with the importance of naming that which we do not usually think to name.
Linden.
There are questions I can't answer, details that remain locked away. Was I in love on that one evening in Claremont, or recovering from heartbreak? Was I alone? Did I have short or long hair? Was I going out to meet friends, or was I heading home? Did I recognize the sweetness of that moment?
And in my grandmother's backyard. Was I happy? Did I understand why I was there with my grandmother and not at home? Did I sense already the need to flee?
Here's what I do know: that smell reminds me that I was loved, early on. And later, that having the freedom to go is delicious. The experiences of being held and moving on--the twinned forces of my life, there in the buds of the linden tree.
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