The NOTEbook — seasonal

Summer has a smell. Not one smell — a whole layered vocabulary of them. Sunscreen warming on skin in the late morning. Cut grass after the first real heat of June. Something citrus and cold sweating in a glass. The particular sweetness of air moving through a screen door at dusk, carrying the last warmth of the day with it. You know these smells. You’ve known them your whole life. And every year, the moment you encounter one of them, summer arrives — not on the calendar, but in your body, in your chest, in the specific loosening that happens...