In the Harry Potter universe there’s a love potion. I won’t get into the frankly horrifying implications of such a thing to those poor souls who must live in that world, but I do find the way it is described as smelling to be very interesting. 

It essentially smells like whatever you love, whatever’s best for you, specifically. It’s different for everybody. 

A few weeks ago I described Roby’s head as smelling like those delicious strawberry candies, the ones that grandma’s have in the little plastic wrapping. The one’s filled with syrup. 

Abby cleaned her hair with oil, for a week or two it smelled like that.

But today the top of Roby’s head smelled unfathomable, exceptional, altogether rare. Like some heady combination of rose, incense, honey and spring. It’s a smell that impossible to describe because it changes all the time. Each week, each day, each sniff is a unique sensory and emotional experience that I can’t really put to the pen. 

I doubt anyone could, I doubt anyone but me and Abby could even smell it in the first place, it’d smell good to others, but not the same sort of Good, of course not. I’ve written about this before, and it’s still true. 

It feels like a microcosm of all there is to learn from parenting. 

Some things cannot be shared, neither through words oreven through sharing the actual, honest to goodness experience. Some things are gated through experience and through doing.

That’s probably a good thing.
It’s definitely a good thing to reckon.