You’ll walk into a house years from now that smells like your grandma’s and stop in your tracks. Notice it now.

Smell bypasses everything and lands before thought catches up. Walk into the wrong kitchen in fifteen years and a whole person returns at once, which is startling partly because you never arranged for any of it to be stored. The storing is happening now, every time you are in that house, with no effort from you. What you can add is noticing while the place still exists.

Next time you are at your grandparents’ house, stop in the doorway for a few seconds and take the air in on purpose. Attend to the room, the sounds, the particular mix of it. You are cutting a key you will use later.