Scents that bring back memories

Hello awesome Hivers and Silver Bloggers

There are still a few hours left to participate in the #silverprompts call for Scent Memories. I had a draft for days, but it seems that lately, JIT habits are rubbing off on me. And before time runs out, and it's midnight UTC, I'm going with some of my scent memories of my childhood.

The smell of mango, but not the smell of the bigger mangoes that are usually a mix of yellow and red when ripe. I mean the smell of the small garden mangoes, which here we call mangos de hilacha.

These mangoes have a sweeter flavor. And they don't have that slightly citric touch that I like in mangoes. They are very sweet and juicy when ripe. But they have hilacha, like thick threads, that stay between the teeth. I hardly eat them, and when I get some, I use them to make smoothies or jams.

_{Mangos - my own pic}

But the smell of these mangoes takes me back to my uncle's backyard when I was a child. They lived about an hour and a half from Caracas, and we used to go there on weekends. In the courtyard of the house in the center, there was a big mango tree. The fun was to climb the tree or take turns swinging on a rattan swing that hung from the tree while we gorged ourselves on mangoes.

Another memory of my childhood is brought back by the aroma of another fruit. We call them mamones. In English, they are known as Spanish limes. In my paternal grandparents' house, there was a big mamon tree. The Mamón has a sweet taste. But is one of those fruits that when you eat leave a sensation in your teeth. I don't know how to say it in English, but we call it dentera.

_{Mamones (Spanish limes) Image by Eddy Camejo in Pixabay}

My cousins and I used to eat a lot of mamones only to spend the afternoon complaining that we didn't get rid of the dentera, hehe. Now when I see them, I enjoy the smell, but I rarely put one in my mouth.

It's no secret that I don't like black coffee with sugar at all, but there is a sweet coffee aroma that transports me to the kitchen of my maternal great-grandmother's house and it is the smell of aguarapao coffee. That is a coffee brewed in a cloth filter to which is added papelón (unrefined cane sugar).

_{Peltre coffee cup - my own pic}

My aunt, my grandmother's sister, liked coffee that way, and in that kitchen, the aroma of aguarapao coffee was always mixed with lots of delicious aromas of the meals that my grandmother's Nana made, smells that stayed in the past because Nana was a great cook, but she never was good to share a recipe and her casseroles went with her. My aunt used to drink her agurapao coffee in a peltre cup like the one in the picture.

The smell of the Callas Lily reminds me of the vacation cabin I used to go to with my parents and uncles in the Andes. My mother loves Callas. And in Merida they are beautiful. In the house, there were always Callas, and their scent mixed with the smell of firewood and the clean mountain air.

_{Calla Lily Photo by Manuel Torres Garcia on Unsplash}

I could go on for hours writing about scents that bring back memories, but I'll leave it here for today. This is my contribution to Silver Prompt 3: Scents Memories. If you want to join you still have a few hours until today July 7 at midnight UTC to do so.

Thank you very much for reading!

_{All writing are my own unless otherwise stated.}
_{Images credits on the caption}

August 07, 2022