Cataloguing my father's letters by smell

Spent the afternoon sorting old letters — not by date, not by handwriting, but by what still clings to the paper. Coffee, pipe smoke, one envelope that smells faintly of a rainstorm in 1982. It's a mad way to archive a life, but the senses remember things the words never said. I logged each one in a notebook I'll probably throw away, and that's fine.