Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Scent Memory

The wildfire raging miles away from my workplace has the entire city filled with smoke. The interesting thing is that the smoke concentration is worse indoors. The 3-story building in which I work reeks with smoke.

This morning I headed to the bathroom, freshly cleaned by our fabulous custodial staff. The sharp scent of cleaning solution mixed with smoke brought a childhood memory back as clear as if it were happening right then. I used to spend a lot of time with my aunt and cousin when I was a kid. My aunt cleaned the social services office. This was in the late 70s early 80s when smoking was allowed in the workplace. When I accompanied my aunt to work one of my jobs was cleaning the ash trays. I would dump them and wash them with a blue solution in a spray bottle. It smelled exactly like the bathroom this morning. It made me feel really happy. I loved going with my aunt to her cleaning jobs. There's something otherworldly about wandering around an empty building after the sun's gone down.

1 comment:

EssBee said...

Mmmmm . . . smoking . . .