Prompt: cardamom

The first time I ate or rather drank something with cardamom, I didn't know I was drinking it. And that went on for many, many years. Probably because it was only one of the countless specks infusing the air invisibly, exotically, pungently, delicately. Some scents immediately on being sniffed take you somewhere, somewhere you've been before, to someone you've known. For instance, a certain clean, freshly ironed cotton will transport me to the late afternoon I met my husband. He gave me a piggyback ride and I knew as I put my head on his shoulder that the t-shirt he was wearing had been recently laundered and hung to dry in the sun of an East coast summer afternoon. But cardamom is not exactly like that. It is true that I do remember he and I drank chai for the first time, together. It was at the back of an Indian store, in Berkeley, many years after the piggy back ride.