dinner, speeding up the highway to New Hampshire as the sun began to set.
“Do you smell that?” he asked, crinkling his face with a look of disgust.
“No,” I said, annoyed. “Obviously.”
“Oh, God, it’s horrible. Foul. Like there’s a sewage plant leaking . . .”
We were in suburban Massachusetts. I didn’t think there was a sewage plant nearby. But I began to feel uncomfortable. Obviously I was missing something big. I began to think: What if I was alone and I couldn’t detect a horrible odor? Instead of sewage, what if it was the smoke of a fire? A gas leak from the stove? By the time we got to my father’s house I was terrified that I would be poisoned by rotten food. I would burn to death in my home, unable to detect the scent of smoke in the next room over until it was too late. “If only she could have smelled it coming,” they would say at my funeral.
We got out of the car and I limped with my crutches to the door. Once inside I asked my father if there were any sewage plants between Brookline and Nashua. “Would something pumping odor like that into the atmosphere be a health risk?” And then I looked at my brother, who had plopped himself down on the couch. He was laughing.
“There wasn’t any sewage plant, you goon,” he said. “I just had really bad gas. I farted. I wanted to see if you really can’t smell.” I saw my father begin to chuckle. I gave a weak smile. As the sound of their voices bounced around the room I thought, what a strange sound. It had been so long since I had last heard laughter.
EVERY MORNING IN THOSE MONTHS, my mother would bring me a steaming mug of tea as I sat in my bed, which still dominated the living room downstairs. Sometimes the tea was laced with milk and sugar and sometimes it was served plain. Occasionally she would ask me if I could tell what kind it was, knowing that the taste of bergamot and chai, jasmine and chamomile are indistinguishable without their strong and varied scents. She would ask casually, accompanied with a careful smile as if to say it didn’t matter. And I would inhale, willing myself to register something, anything. But there was nothing—just the wetness of steam and the sharp heat of the mug.
“English Breakfast? Peppermint?” I had no idea.
Food, which only weeks before had been my consuming passion, had been reduced to a tasteless texture. I dreaded eating. I didn’t want to open my mouth. The necessity of smell slapped me across the face with every bite. It forced me to feel what was gone. I didn’t yet want to face what I had lost. But I had to eat.
Without scent, the taste buds are capable of detecting only salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. Umami, which was first identified by Kikunae Ikeda in Japan in 1908 and is associated with a handful of amino acids, especially L-glutamate, is considered by many to be the fifth taste. It is commonly described as a savory taste and is found in many protein-rich foods: from mushrooms to meat, tomatoes to cheese and monosodium glutamate, or MSG. In 2009, a study done by the Monell Chemical Senses Center in fact confirmed that there is a taste receptor genetically coded in humans to aid in the detection of glutamate. But as I quickly learned, every other element of the flavor of food put in the mouth is experienced by smell.
I could taste the sweet of sugar in a Popsicle, the salt on a potato chip, the acid sour of a squirt of lemon juice in a cup of water. I would inhale and exhale, just as Maws had taught me. There was, after all, neurological reasoning: scent is perceived from both the intake of air through the nose, called orthonasal olfaction, and in the slow release traveling through the back of the mouth, known as retronasal . Both are important, each bringing the perception of scent to the olfactory receptors through different pathways. All were blank for me.
Ice cream was a thick and cold slush. Lattes were hot, sometimes even gelatinous liquid. I ate yogurt for its
“Do you smell that?” he asked, crinkling his face with a look of disgust.
“No,” I said, annoyed. “Obviously.”
“Oh, God, it’s horrible. Foul. Like there’s a sewage plant leaking . . .”
We were in suburban Massachusetts. I didn’t think there was a sewage plant nearby. But I began to feel uncomfortable. Obviously I was missing something big. I began to think: What if I was alone and I couldn’t detect a horrible odor? Instead of sewage, what if it was the smoke of a fire? A gas leak from the stove? By the time we got to my father’s house I was terrified that I would be poisoned by rotten food. I would burn to death in my home, unable to detect the scent of smoke in the next room over until it was too late. “If only she could have smelled it coming,” they would say at my funeral.
We got out of the car and I limped with my crutches to the door. Once inside I asked my father if there were any sewage plants between Brookline and Nashua. “Would something pumping odor like that into the atmosphere be a health risk?” And then I looked at my brother, who had plopped himself down on the couch. He was laughing.
“There wasn’t any sewage plant, you goon,” he said. “I just had really bad gas. I farted. I wanted to see if you really can’t smell.” I saw my father begin to chuckle. I gave a weak smile. As the sound of their voices bounced around the room I thought, what a strange sound. It had been so long since I had last heard laughter.
EVERY MORNING IN THOSE MONTHS, my mother would bring me a steaming mug of tea as I sat in my bed, which still dominated the living room downstairs. Sometimes the tea was laced with milk and sugar and sometimes it was served plain. Occasionally she would ask me if I could tell what kind it was, knowing that the taste of bergamot and chai, jasmine and chamomile are indistinguishable without their strong and varied scents. She would ask casually, accompanied with a careful smile as if to say it didn’t matter. And I would inhale, willing myself to register something, anything. But there was nothing—just the wetness of steam and the sharp heat of the mug.
“English Breakfast? Peppermint?” I had no idea.
Food, which only weeks before had been my consuming passion, had been reduced to a tasteless texture. I dreaded eating. I didn’t want to open my mouth. The necessity of smell slapped me across the face with every bite. It forced me to feel what was gone. I didn’t yet want to face what I had lost. But I had to eat.
Without scent, the taste buds are capable of detecting only salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. Umami, which was first identified by Kikunae Ikeda in Japan in 1908 and is associated with a handful of amino acids, especially L-glutamate, is considered by many to be the fifth taste. It is commonly described as a savory taste and is found in many protein-rich foods: from mushrooms to meat, tomatoes to cheese and monosodium glutamate, or MSG. In 2009, a study done by the Monell Chemical Senses Center in fact confirmed that there is a taste receptor genetically coded in humans to aid in the detection of glutamate. But as I quickly learned, every other element of the flavor of food put in the mouth is experienced by smell.
I could taste the sweet of sugar in a Popsicle, the salt on a potato chip, the acid sour of a squirt of lemon juice in a cup of water. I would inhale and exhale, just as Maws had taught me. There was, after all, neurological reasoning: scent is perceived from both the intake of air through the nose, called orthonasal olfaction, and in the slow release traveling through the back of the mouth, known as retronasal . Both are important, each bringing the perception of scent to the olfactory receptors through different pathways. All were blank for me.
Ice cream was a thick and cold slush. Lattes were hot, sometimes even gelatinous liquid. I ate yogurt for its
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