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His smell triggered a memory

  • There are many things I don’t like to remember even though I have the fear of totally forgetting them.

    I don’t want to remember some days in my life but things I see and hear remind me constantly.

    I don’t want to think of the people most dear to me but far from me, yet a lot of these deja vu(s) don’t help.

    Today, it’s the smell. A scent so soothing to the nerves; the smell of leaves and seas and the earth. Funny I don’t remember the name of this smell but I remember vividly what it looks like and who it reminds me of.

    It’s a small clear bottle with a turquoise blue cover, it’s neither round nor squared. It’s more inbetween- an oval with edges.

    It reminds me of my mother. I remember the day, like every other day except yesterday, when she’d just finished having a bath and I was applying a moisturiser to her back. She had a very beautiful skin, not as tanned as mine or as pale as Michael Jackson’s.
    We’d cream her back every morning, not because she had no hands, but because we all enjoyed it and she loved the bond between us- my mother and her three children.

    “From side to side, and the top of my back” She’d demand.

    Our hands were quite tiny so three pairs could do the job perfectly.

    I think it was the day after she returned from her vacation to London. One of the things my mother would never forget to bring is perfume. She had brought a carton of different kinds of perfume, from London, ranging from Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds to Elizabeth Arden’s Provocative Woman.

    One of the perfumes, of which I can’t remember its name, is what smells off the guy seated next to me today.But I am paying no attention to him, just his smell.

    I just want to close my eyes, enjoy this smell and take myself back to the days when my mother was alive. I want to relive the memory of her presence in my life just this once.