When we were little, my dad used to grow potatoes and store them year-round in the crawlspace under the floor. My two sisters and I would fight when it was time to fetch taters, because the whole thing felt almost-exotic enough to be a C.S. Lewis fantasy childscape: we’d pull up the secret floor boards in the living room, lift up the second layer of plywood, and the dark, dank smell of the crawlspace would rise up. We’d assume the position: standing bolt upright with our arms straight up overhead, so my dad could grab us by the wrists and lower us into the darkness below. When we finished passing up potatoes, we’d then extend our arms overhead and get plucked up out of the potato cave and placed ever-so-gently back into the living room.

We never did find Narnia, but when I opened a mail-order box of seed potatoes today, the powdery, almost moldy-but-not-quite smell of cellared potatoes rushed out of the box, and it was as powerful of a portal back to my childhood as any magic wardrobe could ever be.