"He's my special man. I'm the illustrator that writes the book!"
Boy, was he proud! My heart instantly recognized it as one of those moments.
It was one of those "ah-ha" moments in my child's learning that I never want to miss, like when he reads his first story book or writes his name for the first time all by himself! I just couldn't think of handing off those moments to another teacher in a classroom far away from me. They are too precious!
Even Mason talked about odors being able to bring up memories, possibly even more than some of our other senses. Though, she speaks of odors in relation to nature, and not a kinergarten classroom. But, I get what she means.
"We do not attach enough importance to the discrimination of odours, whether as a safeguard to health or as a source of pleasure."
"...odours enter more readily than other sense perceptions into those––
'sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,'
which add so much to the sum of our happiness, because they unite themselves readily with our purely incorporeal joys by links of association. 'I never smell woodruff without being reminded––' is the sort of thing we hear and say continually, but we do not trouble ourselves to realise that we owe a double joy to the odour of the woodruff ...the joy of the pleasant influences about us when we pluck the flower, and the possibly more personal joy of that other time with which we associate it." Vol. 2 p 186
Maybe someday when my son smells Mr. Sketch markers he will recall his "ah-ha!"-circle-people-moment from last night. Who knows? But I know that now on when I smell them I'll think of him in all his sweetness and joy, another happy memory.