The Memory of Scent

I was just going to close up on here and let my kids have a turn on the computer. But then suddenly I smelled the night jasmine coming in from the balcony door on the other side of the house. The doorman has a night jasmine tree planted just under our balcony. It's LOVELY when the wind blows in off the Mediterranean Sea (which is about 12 blocks away) and hits that tree. We get to reap the benefits. It reminds me of walking in Amman, Jordan in the evenings on my way home from work.

Scents always trigger memory quicker than any word or song or  picture. The smell of Old Spice cologne makes me think of my dad. And whenever we walk past the pastry wholesale shop on our way to the butcher, I smell the aroma of cooking sugar and butter and immediately I'm back in Nikaia, Greece in KAIROS bakery where my husband worked when we first started dating. The smell of rain makes me think of shopping in Germany with my sister. And the smell of freshly cut grass can take me to any number of softball fields where I played on various teams growing up.  The smell of "Sweet Honesty" perfume by Avon makes me think of my mom in the summertime when I was only 8 and the smell of tangerines takes me back to St. Nicklaus' Tag in Germany and putting my boots outside the door for treats.

The smell of peppermint candy makes me think of my paternal grandfather, Buddy Nicholas. And the smell of  pine trees, Frito's, or pecan pie is an instantaneous trip to Mobile, Alabama. The smell of iced tea makes me think of my Aunt Ginger.  The smell of Baby Magic lotion makes me think of my firstborn son and how he loved to take a bath in the kitchen sink.

The smell of lemon Carpet Fresh makes me laugh, because my cousin, Jim, empty an entire box of it on the rug in the den one time and even after we vacuumed it all up, no one could walk into the den without their eyes tearing up for about three weeks. The smell of Poison perfume makes me want to vomit. (Someone bathed in it at work when I was pregnant with my first baby.)  And the smell of popcorn makes me think of sitting around our living room watching movies together.

The jasmine is filling up my head and reminding me that it's not my turn on the computer anymore. It's lovely. I'm going to go sit closer to the balcony door to enjoy it and the other scents of Summer.

You know how much you hate it when your sinuses are all clogged up due to allergies and even when you cook a really awesome meal like baked chicken in lemon juice with potatoes, you can't enjoy the smell or taste of it because your stupid nose is not working?!

Mine cleared up. About 14.6 seconds before my son decided to have a fart-fest in the living room and attempt to kill us all. My sinuses cleared out about the time the green cloud wafted across the room and bitch-slapped me. Of course, this left four of us pinching our noses closed and yelling and the responsible party in a fit of giggles. (Thankfully, Randa was asleep in another room and didn't have to suffer like the rest of us.) Could that have been the end of the night?

Of course, not. This is MY life.

The reeking odor nauseated Samiya, who was already feeling under the weather. She complained to me holding her stomach that Ismail farted and that she literally felt like puking. I directed her to the bathroom. She didn't make it past the door and left an even smellier trail of chicken that hadn't been chewed very well. I got her cleaned up and changed and off to bed.  I cleaned up the big mess and then remembered that she may get ill again during the night and that perhaps I should put a bucket next to her bed. Only the bucket had a really dirty towel in it that I'd decided to wash by hand. It's a bathmat type towel and I use it to mop up spills on the kitchen floor because the 'genius' who built this apartment put very smooth wall tiles on the floor and I slip a lot.

I had put laundry detergent in the bucket filled it with water and threw the towel in around 9 this morning. Well, it's nearly 4 a.m. (Yeah, I don't sleep much.) So, I figured that I'd just rinse the towel very well and then wash it again in the washing machine tomorrow to get it really clean now that all of the sand and salt and stuff that had been all over it had now been soaked out of it. So I tossed the towel into the sink and then spilled the soapy water all over the floor and pushed it down the open drain with my giant squeegee thingy. And then I rinsed it and squeegeed again. Then I yelled at Ismail, "DID YOU FART AGAIN?"

He swore he hadn't.  I did what I NEVER should have done. In fact, as I did it my brain began screaming at me, "NO! You idiot! DON'T DO IT! STOPPPPPPPPPPPP!" But of course, my body was like, "You're not the boss of me! I'll do what I want to!" And it didn't listen. And that's about the time my hand  holding that nasty ass towel reached my nose and I inhaled so deeply to see if that was the source of stink I was smelling that my lungs filled to capacity.

My body immediately apologized to my brain.  My brain gave my body the finger.

So in the last 20 minutes that my nasal passages have decided to drop their strike, I've managed to smell giant teenager farts, barfed up chicken and rotten backwater towel!  Why in the hell couldn't they have started working when I was baking that chicken earlier today???!!!!