(no subject)
I had just walked in from retrieving my bike from a friend's house--I had left it there last night in the middle of that ridiculous thunder and lightning storm--and I went into the bathroom to throw water on my face. As I walked out, I was struck by a particular smell, a smell I remembered really well: the smell of my (deceased) grandmother's house. I haven't been in her home for over three years now, but I can remember the strange smell it had, how it lingered in the clothes you had brought down, in your suitcase. Stale cigarettes were the predominant component, but there was also the combination of cosmetics--she never wore the outrageously strong old-lady perfume--and a faint hint of the flowers that were bedded under her windows and in pots in the house itself. And it couldn't be called unpleasant, although its lingering cousin definitely was. Somehow the residue it left was even more cigarettes, drowning out the other pleasant smells, but remaining, on some deep level, related and thus somewhat acceptable.
It's odd to me how persistent this memory is, just as is the image of her in her nightgown at the kitchen table, smoking, of course, sipping coffee and looking out of her picture window at the birds at the bird-feeder. Or of the hutch at the back of the kitchen, with her small collection of tea cups and spoons. Or the really old wood-framed TV on the living room floor. Or the enormous crucifix over her bed. These memories linger on, but the smells--the main one, and the musty basement smell of detergents and dust, sawdust and oil on the tools that were only used by my father when we came down, the soft garments hanging to dry in a huge fabric maze all over the low-ceiling room.
I wonder if seeing my grandmother's sister, who is now older than she was when she passed, helped bring this memory back to the surface. She looked old, her voice hoarse from a recent hospital stay's breathing tube episode, her stance crooked and unstable--and yet she was the same old, kooky lady. Caustic. Sarcastic. Mean. But also twinkling, kind, and genuine. She is not my grandmother, but she is clearly her sister. Memories have a way of pushing their way in, if given the chance, and seeing the small bit of my grandmother in her sister was enough, I guess.
But that smell...I miss it, but in missing it I only grow to miss her more.
It's odd to me how persistent this memory is, just as is the image of her in her nightgown at the kitchen table, smoking, of course, sipping coffee and looking out of her picture window at the birds at the bird-feeder. Or of the hutch at the back of the kitchen, with her small collection of tea cups and spoons. Or the really old wood-framed TV on the living room floor. Or the enormous crucifix over her bed. These memories linger on, but the smells--the main one, and the musty basement smell of detergents and dust, sawdust and oil on the tools that were only used by my father when we came down, the soft garments hanging to dry in a huge fabric maze all over the low-ceiling room.
I wonder if seeing my grandmother's sister, who is now older than she was when she passed, helped bring this memory back to the surface. She looked old, her voice hoarse from a recent hospital stay's breathing tube episode, her stance crooked and unstable--and yet she was the same old, kooky lady. Caustic. Sarcastic. Mean. But also twinkling, kind, and genuine. She is not my grandmother, but she is clearly her sister. Memories have a way of pushing their way in, if given the chance, and seeing the small bit of my grandmother in her sister was enough, I guess.
But that smell...I miss it, but in missing it I only grow to miss her more.