I’m a little girl in the 70’s, watching in fascination as my teenage aunt gets ready for an evening out. She sits at her vanity, does her hair makeup, and spritzes herself with perfume… Charlie. I can still smell it… feminine but strong.
I’m sitting with my grandma in church. I am small and bored, and my fascination with the ceiling is wearing off. Grandma’s purse is shiny, with a clasp that closes with two satisfying little balls that snap together. I think it is most elegant. She fishes out a peppermint for me, and a tiny glass sample of perfume that she lets me put on. It smells soft and sweet.
I’m watching my Grandpa in his workshop, cutting and carving wood into something marvelous. The smell of sawdust, dusty and woody and comforting, fills the garage. I run my finger through shavings so small they are fluffy and gentle to touch.
I’m at my other grandparents, down between the old barn and the pond. I am walking in mud that oozes around my canvas sneakers. The grass, green and long, has been pressed into the mud by a tractor that came along before me. I smell the rain that has past, and the whiff of old stone and wood from the barn, the sun warming the mud and the reeds of the pond.
Smells are my time-machines.