I am going to tell you about an odor or scent that is so wonderful and makes me so happy and feel so secure and loved I could cry. I did some research into that just in case I was crazy or something but science says that it is true. It's called odor-evoked biographical memory. The sense of smell is processed by our brain differently than other senses are. Certain scents or smells can bring up memories, most often of our early childhood. There is no easier way to describe it so here goes. The smell that brings to me such joy is the combined scents of cabbage, mothballs and sweat. I know, I know that sounds awful but let me explain. That was what, as a child, I thought my grandmother smelled like.
In Chicago, Grandma mostly lived in those large apartment buildings you would see on the corner. Those old buildings were dark and musty and in the halls there hung the smell of cabbage cooking. Seems to me immigrant grandmothers of all European extraction were forever cooking cabbage. Grandma also knitted Scandinavian-style raglan sleeve sweaters. She wore hers until the hottest Chicago day and then she stored hers in a chest, in mothballs. Grandma was not a dirty woman but I clearly remember my mother trying to give her a roll-on Tussy deodorant. She did not understand why she would need that!
Grandma was a rock. No matter what happened you knew you would be okay because Grandma would figure out what to do. My Mom was a sweetheart but easily brought to tears. My grandfather was the same. I never quite understood or appreciated that. But.....If everyone else was boo-hooing or praying and wringing their hands, or pointing fingers. Grandma would get down to business. "We have to make a plan" she would say. "It will be alright, you can do it, Ranae , I know what you are like, you are strong like me".
I would go up the stairs to her third floor apartment (she always liked to live on the top floor "where the sun is") and in the hallway I could hear my Grandpa playing his Norwegian records and singing softly. Grandma, in the hot kitchen, would turn and when she saw me would throw up her hands like seeing me was a wonderful surprise. She would brush the curly tendrils of hair off her sweaty forehead. She then wiped her hands on the apron that covered her printed dress, threw out her arms and pulled me tightly into her ample breast. I would close my eyes and inhale deeply. There was the smell. The smell of Grandma. The smell of love, of acceptance, of security, of everything that was good in my world. The smell of cabbage, mothballs and sweat.
 |
| my Grandma, on her back porch in Chicago |
