Things that you believe have been permanently lost to you, may...

Things that you believe have been permanently lost to you, may return, unannounced, in a blast of illumination.

Molly Birnbaum, a could-have-been chef, set to attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York City, lost her sense of taste and smell after suffering a severe head trauma—result of a car accident in Brookline, Mass.

Miraculously, the sense of smell returned to her one day:

[…]while helping prepare dinner, she was struck by something of a nasal lightning flash. “I was chopping rosemary and it just came at me, very forcefully,” she said. “It was like this shot in the dark of smell. I was elated that I could smell something.

Since then, Birnbaum has been rejoicing in her olfactory adventures, smelling away herbs and spices with great gusto.

The sense of taste hasn’t come back to her yet, so she has revised her career options from being an aspiring cook to becoming a cookbook editor.

Season to Taste: How I Lost my Smell and Found my Way is Birnbaum’s memoir that chronicles in vivid language her lost and found story.

Excerpts from the book tell me that she has a way with words as well.