Archives for March 2010

The color of everything
fades in the air
but she is the film of a book of a story
of the smell of her hair…

This morning, The Princess and I were standing in line at the post office – I needed a book of stamps and wanted to mail off a check for the money I’d raised with my bake sale for the Avon Walk. An older woman walked in shortly after we did and promptly cut in front of us in line. Feeling mellow and in no particular rush, I decided not to be a jerk, not to call her out – and (as is so rare) just chill and go with the flow.

Until she turned back to speak to me.

As she leaned in to speak (to ask me what I was mailing and to where, if you can believe it), I blanched at the smell. Stale cigarette smoke and a musky smell of I don’t know what, filled the lining of my nose. I couldn’t wait to get out of the post office. Even hours later, the smell lingered in my nose.

Of all of my senses, my sense of smell is by far the strongest. Under normal circumstances, I have this superhuman olfactory sensing skill – during my pregnancies? It was magnified times about a thousand.

My sense of smell is how I know a migraine is coming on – when smells I normally find pleasant or neutral (my shampoo, milk) become overpowering and feel like they are gnawing away at my nasal passages I know it’s probably about time to load up with some headache medicine and hunker down.

But similarly, my sense of smell is a huge link to the past and so many memories are tied in smells.

The other day, I was walking down the street and as I passed a pale yellow two story house, I caught a whiff of Estee Lauder’s Beautiful hanging on the air. This is the perfume my best friend wore all through high school. Beautiful is the scent of getting ready for cheerleading at basketball games, picking out clothes for a night out, sneaking out through her bedroom window to go out after her parents had fallen asleep. With one inhalation I was back in the early 90s with big hair, no wrinkles and nothing but time.

Sometimes the smell of red wine takes me back to my dad’s house. He’s playing piano and the room is dark with a small lamp shining on the keys. A glass sits on a coaster on the piano’s glossy surface.

It should surprise no one that the fragrances that trigger the most immediate reaction are baking smells. The smell of molasses and I am standing in my grandmother’s kitchen cutting rounds of cookie dough and placing them on a baking sheet. A warm cinnamon smell evokes Christmas morning, laughter over plates of monkey bread. The sweet brown sugar aroma of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies means it is one of those days that ends in Y – maybe nothing special, maybe not for any reason, but always out of a peaceful moment, some sort of cookie-induced zen.

It takes so little to transport me from where I am to where I was. Just one deep breath in is all it takes to trigger those senses and memories.

One of the takeaways from Blissdom that still rattles through my head on a near daily basis is the consistent focus on authenticity – on being authentic in your writing, on being true to your voice.

It’s hard when you write and you put it out for public consumption, and sometimes it’s easier to hold everyone at a figurative arm’s length versus putting yourself out there with bed head and morning breath (both of which I wake up with daily, by the way – in addition to pillow crinkles on my face and a general confused disposition until I have a few minutes to blink away the last remnants of sleep).

As a writer (and I do consider myself a writer), I know my voice. Maybe it’s not one that stands out more than any of the kajillion other bloggers out there – but it’s mine.

A friend once referred to my little internet space as “plastic Sarah” – and I think that’s always been because if you mire yourself in the negative too much, it’s kinda easy to get yourself stuck that way. By focusing my writing on the positive – or the things I could change – well, that is a way of keeping one foot in front of the other. It keeps me productive. It keeps me sane.

But yeah, I have bad days. I have days where I (true story) pitch a jalapeno across the kitchen because I’m pissed off because there’s no green enchilada sauce and I had a craving for some spicy enchiladas that wouldn’t quit. I have days where I drop my kid off at preschool and I feel inadequate next to the perfectly coiffed preschool moms who don’t set foot out the door with stray hairs or bare faces.

There are days when I’m ready to scream because while I am so blessed and grateful to have a job, sometimes I think I can feel my brain getting softer and I long for challenges – the kind you don’t necessarily get when you’re at home cutting the crusts of peanut butter sandwiches.

But isn’t that the way life is? Sometimes it’s powdered sugar coated lemon squares and sometimes it’s three week old banana nut bread growing fur. You can rest assured, whether it’s the good stuff or the bad stuff, the voice you read will always be authentically mine – but somedays, you’ll have to watch out for flying jalapenos.