Form me, the smell of bacon cooking will always be associated with comfort.
As a child, my family lived in Southeast Minneapolis. I remember a neighbor’s house burned down and shortly thereafter I had a nightmare about the place.
I dreamed that a friend of mine and his family were trapped within the burning house but they weren’t exactly my friend and his family. They were some monster-version of them, with big heads and oblong bodies. They were swinging on swings inside of the house as it burned.
And I could not save them.
I have absolutely no idea what, if anything, the imagery means but it was my first nightmare.
While it seems silly and ridiculous now, it was scary as hell then. But I awoke from it to the smell of bacon cooking from my mother making breakfast downstairs, and thus the smell of bacon reassured me that I was only dreaming.