Today is one of those blah days when I should be working on 100 things, but I need to write. I don't think I can even touch a few of the topics that have been swirling in my brain, so I am going to write about something totally different: nostalgia.
Since we had Mabel, I have been trying to make our house as "natural" as I can: organic soaps and shower products, natural detergents and cleaning supplies, and as much organic food as is feasible given the price and availability. I don't microwave plastic or use canned food anymore, and we try to minimize our consumption of frozen food laden with preservatives. I am by no means a total organic convert, and I eat plenty of junk food. Every now and then I break my own rules, and I don't let the effort to be more green invade our comfort level (certain things just taste gross if all- natural, and certain products are just not useful). But I do what I can in an effort to be a little more healthy now that we have the little one.
While I feel good about these choices we make (I say "we" because, surprisingly, for the most part, J is now on board, despite some grousing and questioning in the beginning. He subsequently read an article about pesticides and changed his tune. I still can't get him on natural bath products, but he's good with all else), I sometimes just long for stuff fraught with phthalates and other supposedly- hazardous chemicals. Or I miss a time when nobody worried about them.
My favorite nostalgic smell is that of Dial soap-- the orange bar, specifically. This soap is my childhood at the Cape-- at my grandmother's previous house, where she lived by herself for many years and we would visit all the time. A few summers, I would go for weeks at a time, and my cousin R would fly in from Colorado to join. We'd spend our days working on our tans at the beach and then choreographing dance routines to Salt n Pepa tunes in the basement. The prior house owners had a big pool table in the basement, and my grandmother never had it removed. Sometimes R and I would sleep on it, and sometimes we would actually play pool. Every day, a post- beach shower was made complete by a bar of Dial orange. I didn't think much of it back in 1992, but now when I smell it (my ObGyn's office uses it), I am overcome by a nostalgia so overwhelming that I'm not sure whether to smile or cry. Such innocence, such naivete is associated with those years-- and the breaking of said innocence too-- I smoked my first cigarette and drank my first booze (a wine cooler) with my cousin during one of those summers.
Another one is the scent of Junior Mints. I am immediately in my other grandmother's car-- a silver Ford Taurus, with her offering me some of the candies. She would sit at the end of our driveway and wait for me to get off the elementary school bus, and then take me on a voyage doing errands at the bank in Westwood or at the Roche Brothers. We'd end up at her house where my mom would pick me up. Nana had a plaid seat cover for the driver's spot, as she couldn't see high enough I guess as she aged, and when I smell Junior Mints, I think of that seat cover and the fun trips in which she would always secure for me a few good bank lollipops.
And my own scents (I mean ones I have purchased, not that I have given off :)) bring me places too. Bath and Body Works "Moonlight Path" plants me in the summer apartment I shared with my good friend C in Providence during the summer before our senior year of college. We both loved the scent, so we bought the lotion and the perfume and would share. I don't think I've worn it since then (maybe just here and there). But upon detecting it on someone else, I see myself in our dilapidated, cheap apartment or at a shift at the restaurant where we both worked. I had the the whole world ahead of me back then and had no idea.
We have a "no fragrance" rule in school this year due to common student allergies. Between that and my own non- use of chemical stuff, I rarely get whiffs of smells that deliver me to great places. Places and times when I was either content or too naive to know I wasn't. I wonder what sorts of stuff will make Mabel feel nostalgic. Though I didn't record them all here, I've got lots of other smells in my nostalgia arsenal: brownies are my mom on Sunday nights; Tide laundry is the across- the- street- neighbors; coffee is my 5th- grade teacher Mrs. Gorman. It's funny how our bodies take in these scents, memorize them, and relate them. Pretty cool given we don't know we are doing it.
I hope I can create some ways that Mabel can, as she gets older, transport herself back in time via nostalgia. This traveling through time is of such comfort, despite the fact that it reminds me the times are gone.
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