Tomatoes.

Did you know that there is a word for when a smell brings back a memory? It is called the Proust effect. It’s named after a French writer who noticed the smell of tea made him think of his childhood. Our senses are wonderful things. Thoughts we have hidden away, experiences that we forgot to photograph. They are there waiting for our nose to help us along the way.

There are many smells that does this for me. My grandmother’s perfume, which is no longer in production. Rain… I love the smell of rain. When clouds give way to the pressure of condensation I am a boy again, barefoot and muddy. I associate smells with holidays. My old sniffer goes crazy during Christmas.

Yet, there is one smell that really gets me.

My grandfather had a garden that would make the Babylonians jealous. If it was a vegetable, and we ate it, he grew it. As a child I would walk through his garden and crops would tower over me. Corn stalks were so tall they would block the sun. He protected his garden like a king over a small city. We were not aloud to pick anything…except…tomatoes.

As children, out favorites were the small ones that didn’t grow any larger than a grape. We called them “Tommy toes” but when I became an adult I found out that highfalutin people call them “cherry tomatoes.” I always wondered who Tommy was, and why our tomatoes were named after his toes. Actually, it was not until writing this that I understood it.

Tom-e-toes. Tomatoes. (get it?)

While cherry tomatoes sounds nice, I still prefer to pick a few of Tommy’s toes.

It was only those small tomatoes that he would let us pick. We would make a pouch with our shirts and fill them up until the fruit spilled over the top, shoving the ones we were able to catch in our mouths. What I remember most wasn’t the taste. What I remember most was when I went to wash may hands there was a smell. They smelled like tomatoes.

I’m telling you this garden was huge, so we had more tomatoes than Heinz. We ate them in soup, sliced on the side of our meals with a little salt. If there was a way to eat a tomato we did it, or invented one.

The best way was my Nana’s tomato sandwiches. I do not want to go into too much detail because the recipe is top secret, and rarely has it ever been replicated. Once I ate a tomato sandwich for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.

What I remember most, however, wasn’t the taste. What I remember most was the smell. Those sandwiches smelled like tomatoes.

My family has a garden now. It is nothing compared to what my Papa had. It’s a few beds in my back yard, but we have tomatoes. This year when they began to grow and bloom, there it was. My daughter was with me and she reached down and touched the stem and leaves of the plant.

“Smell your hands,” I told her. She gave me a look of distrust. It’s okay, I have earned that look.

“Seriously, smell them,” I asked again. I wanted to give her the gift my grandparents gave me. I wanted one day for her to smell tomatoes and have memories of picking them off the vine with her old man.

Her nose curled.

Her eyes squinted

“I need to go wash my hands,” She said and walked off.

Well, It was worth a shot. There’s a world full of smells for her. Maybe it will be the smell of the old piano that sits in our dinning room. Perhaps it will be fresh cut grass.

We never know when it’s going to happen, but its one of those graces that God has given us. We can’t help but breathing, and every now and then that essential reflex gives us a gift. A memory.

I sure am glad the gift I was given was tomatoes and not Tommy’s toes.