Writing Description, and the sense of smell

     Yes, there are five senses, Virginia. Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste.
     But do writers use them all? Do they even use half of them (would that be two and a half senses?) 
     I don't see many of the senses used in writing today. For example, I'm just starting a national bestseller, Julia Glass's Three Junes. And while the sense of sight is used almost immediately and often through descriptions of color, I noticed that the sense of smell is non-existent until page 16, and then it's only by the author saying in narrative prose that some animals smelled. Since I've not been around that type of animal, I was unable to dredge up anything from my memory, so I continued to read without feeling any closer to the characters or the story.
     As a reader, I need more than visual description to get me tucked inside the character's experience. Including audial description helps, but when the author includes description that tweaks my nose ... well, from that point, I'm lost inside the character's head, heart, and life.
     Now, why is that? I asked myself this morning. Why is the sense of smell so often ignored and so important to me?
     Following that train of thought, it occurred to me that fewer people wear cologne today than did when I was a teenager and even a young adult. Or so it seems to me. In my rural neighborhood, I so rarely smell anything in the local supermarket other than those luscious sugary cake and doughnut aromas in the bakery section, smells that put pounds on every time you inhale; or the fresh outdoor scent when you pass a mound of peaches in the produce department; or the sharp, throat-burning smell of bleach when you walk down the "cleaning goods" aisle and find a bottle toppled from a shelf. Notice, I said rarely.
     Once, a few years back, I was walking down an aisle in the supermarket. This was in the morning when only early risers were shopping. No one else was in the aisle with me, and I heard no sounds around me, not even supermarket music. And then, I felt a choking sensation, while at the same time, I smelled a ghastly, yes, ghastly perfume, so powerful a scent that I pictured the owner spilling a whole bottle on herself (or himself). I didn't know which way to run. Didn't matter, because in the next instant, a woman appeared at the end of the aisle, and I could almost see a rainbow aura of perfume around her ... as she walked ... oh, no ... toward me. I turned and fled. But no matter what aisle I went down, as I completed my shopping, the scent was there, as if she'd left a physical trail while she zigged and zagged her way through the market.
     Recalling that incident, I went further back in my mind and remembered when I stopped wearing cologne or perfume altogether. I was working in an office filled with Dilbert-style cubicles, when a woman in a nearby cubicle chose that moment to spritz herself with her favorite scent. The air-conditioning quickly picked up the airborne droplets and scattered them over every other cubicle within thirty yards ... it was a very large office. That was when I first discovered I had an allergy to strong perfume. While I choked and coughed, it occurred to me that my own perfume might be causing distress to those around me. That was the last day I used cologne or perfume.
     And this brought me to my musings this morning and I found I could encapsulate my life in the various scents I wore over the years.
     I think the first two perfumes I wore (sneaking to wear them as I recall when I was a pre-teen) were influences from my mother: Prince Matchabelli's Wind Song and Bourjois' Evening in Paris. If I recall, I continued wearing one or other of those into my early teens after I got my first job and could buy my own perfume ... I think either one could be purchased at the five-and-dime (what we oldsters used to call J.J. Newberry's and Woolworth's).
     In my late teens and early twenties, I graduated to Tweed by Lentheric (pronounced, I believe, lawn-thur-eek). I still had not discovered my true scent, and this time was following the lead of an older sister who had chosen Tweed as her perfume.
     I was nearly forty before I found my own path through the maze of perfumes in the larger department stores where I lived. I'm not sure why I selected what I did, but do you remember Youth Dew by Estee Lauder? A major recollection, and I still laugh about it, was when a fellow worker (a male) asked me what I was wearing ... when I said Estee Lauder Youth Dew, he said back, "Estee Lauder Used to?" Oh, one other thing. Back in those days, women I knew did everything they could to keep their scent strong, and one way I did that was by soaking a cotton ball with the cologne and wearing it inside my brassiere. One thing about Youth Dew that I especially remember is its rich brown color. Well, Youth Dew faded as my youth dew faded, and for a while I used whatever cologne I received as a birthday or Christmas gift.
     Then, somewhere in my mid to late fifties, I'd undergone a renaissance (which often means a personality change for a female), and I decided it was time to settle into a new scent. This time I selected Shalimar by Guerlain. I'd come a long way from Evening in Paris to Shaimar, and my pocketbook knew that fact the most. (OMG, I just Googled Shalimar and looked at the 1 oz. parfum I used to buy, and it's $317.00. That alone, is a good reason to stop wearing a scent.) But it wasn't price that made me stop. It was just that life took me to rural America where the sky is always blue, the air fresh and clean with the outdoor scents of juniper or lilacs blossoms in the Spring or roses in the Summer (along with the acrid smell of smoke during wildfire season). And now, in the twilight of my life, perfume is the farthest thing from my mind when I don my work clothes and gardening gloves and wide-brimmed hat and step into the bright sunshine to prune trees or rose bushes or dig up the soil in my herb garden or fill the water dish I put out for the local birds and other wildlife.
     But I bet you can see why it's so pleasurable for me to read a book whose author has chosen to include the sense of smell in their story.
     And one afterthought. I still have a spray bottle half filled with Shalimar eau de parfum. It's been on a shelf for more than twelve years. I lifted it to my nose a moment ago, and it still smells spectacular, a rich floral scent with undertones of woodsy and fruity and a bit of nutmeg, like you might want to spread it on a piece of toast. Hmmm, probably not the way Guerlain would describe it, but yummy nonetheless.