The Smell of Cinnamon

For Yumiko Kobayashi Pagnoux

    Alright, this may seem a little weird but I'm going to talk about the aroma of cinnamon as a second blog post.
  First of all, I need to admit something that will probably be a little bit of shocker and will make this topic of conversation seem even more bizarre, but here goes.
  The smell of cinnamon makes me feel sick.
  There, I said it.
  You know those smells that are supposed to be nice but just hit you with a wave of nausea? Well, cinnamon does that for me. I feel dizzy and my stomach literally churns, giving my face an ugly sallow complexion.

  Although the title of this blog post now seems a little contradictory, this is a writing exercise for me, to try to put myself in the shoes of the majority of the human population who loves the smell of cinnamon. You could perhaps label this as an 'emphatic essay', which happens to not be my forte funnily enough.
  Anyway, cinnamon, yes.
  There is something exotic about cinnamon that is often very appealing, and if one closes their eyes, they could possibly transport themselves back to the times of the Silk Route that traversed the entire continent of Asia, when there were no cars or airplanes, when traders relied on the sheer nerve and experience of those taking the Silk Route in order to obtain their merchandise. The uses of cinnamon can be dated back to Antiquity, as offerings to the Olympian God Apollo, and it was regarded as a spice for royalty as cinnamon was native to the faraway region of South East Asia.
  Alright, enough of the history lesson. I just found these facts very interesting. Moving along.
  My parents owned a bakery business and I remember working during the summers in the kitchen when I was young, helping out with the baking and cleaning and all those little odd jobs that I was given in order to give me something to do. The head pastry chef was a Chinese lady called Glynnis, who was, in retrospect, a very eccentric woman, but made, according to many, the best apple pies in the country.
  I hate pies and cooked fruit, and the smell of cinnamon, but I will be the first to admit that there is something very comforting about the aroma of apples being stewed in their own juices with a generous dosing of cinnamon and sugar. Perhaps this is why the smell makes people happy, the childhood sense of security in their mother's kitchen as she bakes something delicious to eat.
  Someone once told me that the smell of cinnamon makes them feel 'warm', the same kind of comfortable warmth that occurs when they get under the covers of a warm bed during a cold winter's day. As I live in a climate that never changes and is constantly over 30 degrees, I found this simile hard to imagine. Many of you might relate to this, I don't know, that's up to you.
  I dedicated this blog post to my little sister (well, she isn't that little, but that's just the overprotective older sister talking) as one of my favourite memories of her is stealing a few cinnamon sticks from a spa down the road because she wanted the smell of cinnamon on her hands. I found this both disgusting and endearing, and I had to stick my head out the window on the car ride home as the smell was giving me a pounding headache. However, there was something so innocent about her action that it hit me with the sudden realisation that, perhaps, the reason behind this eternal love affair with the aroma of cinnamon is that it reminds one of their childhood. Smell is a powerful thing, and it is often a better memory-trigger than sight. Cinnamon is used in hearty stews in Persian and Middle Eastern cuisine, and it is often an ingredient in hot chocolate: does cinnamon really remind you of when you were young?

   Share your thoughts on this line of discussion and tell me (and others) how you feel about the smell of cinnamon :)