Scents and Sensibilities
by Reyna Marder Gentin
Fifty is just a number. Yet, as my big birthday approached, I became hyper-aware, and critical, of the toll that age had begun to take on my body.
I confided in a friend six years older than I my concern that I was showing my age. As if it weren’t bad enough to have to color my hair every five weeks to ward off the gray, my skin felt dry, sallow. Although I inherited my mother’s “good complexion” -- no significant wrinkles yet, I was sure that the skin tags and the laugh lines and frown lines would soon be on their way.
My friend advised me to buy some fancy face cream -- “miraculous,” she said. It came in a small ruby red jar and had a French name.
She also raved about a particular body oil.
“I leave the bottle in the shower. I put it all over myself when I’m still warm and damp. It will make your whole body smooth and supple and you’ll look ten years younger.” In my state of distress, who could resist?
I ordered the miraculous face cream and the must-have body oil. The face cream was lovely, but it was so costly and so rich that I use it sparingly and still have three-quarters of it left more than three years later.
The oil was something else. The first time I put it all over me, I was disturbed by the mild yet persistent scent of sesame. I almost stepped back in the shower to wash it off, but figured I would give it a chance. When I spoke to my friend later that day she asked me how the products were, and, apropos of nothing I had said, she confided: “The scent of the oil is so me. It’s always there, in my bed, on my clothes. My husband says he wouldn’t recognize me without it.”
That was it. It wasn’t my scent. It was her scent. I had a sudden bizarre fear of being stuck in an elevator alone with my friend’s husband and what might ensue because of her scent. The next time my friend visited, I gave her the enormous bottle of the oil I had purchased. I ordered a new one for me, scent-free.
It is my olfactory memory that has the power to bring me back to people and moments, stronger in a way than any photograph. On the evening he proposes, it is my soon-to-be husband’s smell, young and confident and hopeful, that calms me, as I bury my face in the back of his neck and breath deeply. And I can still conjure the smell of my father’s aftershave, sharp and sweet, as he scooped me up in his arms after a long day at work. I strain to smell my mother’s scent, long after she is gone, in the silk scarf that I keep in my dresser drawer.
Once, years ago, I was sick and in the hospital for a few days. I asked my husband to bring me my Chanel No.5. You can’t feel like yourself if you don’t smell like yourself. The bottle is almost empty now, but I keep it, with the label from the hospital identifying it as my property. It reminds me of who I am and where I’ve been.
Fifty is just a number. Yet, as my big birthday approached, I became hyper-aware, and critical, of the toll that age had begun to take on my body.
I confided in a friend six years older than I my concern that I was showing my age. As if it weren’t bad enough to have to color my hair every five weeks to ward off the gray, my skin felt dry, sallow. Although I inherited my mother’s “good complexion” -- no significant wrinkles yet, I was sure that the skin tags and the laugh lines and frown lines would soon be on their way.
My friend advised me to buy some fancy face cream -- “miraculous,” she said. It came in a small ruby red jar and had a French name.
She also raved about a particular body oil.
“I leave the bottle in the shower. I put it all over myself when I’m still warm and damp. It will make your whole body smooth and supple and you’ll look ten years younger.” In my state of distress, who could resist?
I ordered the miraculous face cream and the must-have body oil. The face cream was lovely, but it was so costly and so rich that I use it sparingly and still have three-quarters of it left more than three years later.
The oil was something else. The first time I put it all over me, I was disturbed by the mild yet persistent scent of sesame. I almost stepped back in the shower to wash it off, but figured I would give it a chance. When I spoke to my friend later that day she asked me how the products were, and, apropos of nothing I had said, she confided: “The scent of the oil is so me. It’s always there, in my bed, on my clothes. My husband says he wouldn’t recognize me without it.”
That was it. It wasn’t my scent. It was her scent. I had a sudden bizarre fear of being stuck in an elevator alone with my friend’s husband and what might ensue because of her scent. The next time my friend visited, I gave her the enormous bottle of the oil I had purchased. I ordered a new one for me, scent-free.
It is my olfactory memory that has the power to bring me back to people and moments, stronger in a way than any photograph. On the evening he proposes, it is my soon-to-be husband’s smell, young and confident and hopeful, that calms me, as I bury my face in the back of his neck and breath deeply. And I can still conjure the smell of my father’s aftershave, sharp and sweet, as he scooped me up in his arms after a long day at work. I strain to smell my mother’s scent, long after she is gone, in the silk scarf that I keep in my dresser drawer.
Once, years ago, I was sick and in the hospital for a few days. I asked my husband to bring me my Chanel No.5. You can’t feel like yourself if you don’t smell like yourself. The bottle is almost empty now, but I keep it, with the label from the hospital identifying it as my property. It reminds me of who I am and where I’ve been.