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We are the unwitting carriers of our parents’ secrets, the ripples made by stones we never saw thrown. If I close my eyes and breathe, I can still smell the sparkling, brittle moment my father broke my trust, and with it his heart. I can smell the honey of my mother’s promises. Maybe you will smell them, too, and more as well. The simmering heat of a boy too scared to let go of anger. The bright numbness of a girl who lost everything in an instant of heroism. The scents of rain, and salt, and just a hint of pipe smoke. Things that happened before you found your way to me. I can feel you, my
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Those islands were a place to run away, although I didn’t understand that at the time. I had nothing to run from and every reason to stay. My father was everything. I’ve heard people say that someone is their “whole world,” their eyes filled with stars. But my father was my world, in a way so literal it can still grab my thoughts, pick them up, and toss them around like driftwood in a storm.
It made no sense to me. Scents were like rain, or birds. They left and came back. They told you their own stories, letting you know when the tide was low or the oatmeal was done cooking or the apple trees were getting ready to bloom. But they never stayed.
Smells in the winter were sad things, moldering by the fire or curled up under the roots of trees.
My father had always told me that my birthday was the first day of spring. Not a specific day of the year, but the feeling—an undercurrent of warmth waking up the earth. The scent of violets. Green in the air, he called it. It didn’t matter that sometimes we went backward into winter again; my father told me that happened all the time. There was no problem with celebrating more than once, he said, although I only got to count the first one for my age.
It’s amazing how easily we can cast ourselves in the role of hero.
People are like that—given a chance, we come back, whether we want to or not.
Never trust a smile that doesn’t make it to their eyes, Fisher always said.
It was as if the more space we had, the less we needed it between each other.
Maybe that’s how it always is, I thought—we all just go along, catching glimpses of one another, thinking we know everything.
In the end, it wasn’t the flavors or the alcohol that made people relax—it was the experience of being seen and understood.
“I think one of the most fascinating things about perfumes is how they change with each person’s skin chemistry. I’ve always thought of them as verbs, not nouns. Truth, I’ve found, is much the same.”
