Mirabelle Eau de Vie

Wow. The first whiff of the light but heady alcohol burn boomeranged me right back to the dark little shed in France where my French dad, René-Pierre, was beginning the process of making mirabelle eau de vie. The mirabelle plum is a petite yellow fruit, delicate and sweet, almost floral in nature, and very easy to eat a lot of. I remember watching René-Pierre stirring the bright plums that floated in a contrasting dark wooden barrel, and that the dense smell of fermentation nearly overwhelmed the sweetness of the fruit. The air in the shed was hot and close, the sunshine on the grass outside offering a promise of space and fresh air. I was too young to realize how special the moment was.

Sipping the eau de vie tonight was nearly as good as time-travel; eyes closed, leaning in to the glass, I couldn’t speak for several seconds. I’m torn between wanting to drink it again as soon as possible–the one I drank is locally made–and wanting to give the experience time to recede, so that it will regain its power.

The Puppy House – first of a short series

It was my very first job. I wasn’t, strictly speaking, legally of an age to work. I cleaned puppy & kitten cages, and fed reptiles and birds and fish for a single summer between elementary school and junior high. I once played in the St. Bernard-sized dog house with a friend, so I imagined that the job would be great fun.

Lysol and bleach were the key components of the watery mixture in which the fake pine would assume dominance until the bleach drydown could reassert itself. The pounding sound of steaming water foaming into the cleaning bucket, the clammy feel of Playtex yellow gloves, and the large greying mildewing sponge complete my memory of the behind the scenes prepwork.

Lysol was not a cleaning substance used in our house, so I had no previous association with it, and I do not use it in my home now. Whenever I encounter it out in the world, I see the metallic cages I used it to clean, and I hear the sound of newspapers I had to tear into strips, which were placed in the clean cage as soon as it dried. Fortunately, this memory is immediately followed up by the ink-and-newsprint smell of ripping newspaper, and then by the damp, doughy, almost-not-that-unpleasant smell of puppy-urine-soaked-strips mixed with whatever moist food didn’t make it from puppy bowl to puppy stomach. Because how can you hate anything that smells like puppies?

Simple Green

Apparently, biodegradable, non-toxic Simple Green is the hairstylist’s secret weapon in the fight against blobs of color that somehow land on one’s forehead during the course of an appointment. The soapy, minty, eucalyptol smell with echoes of Listerine transported me back to college, where we used Simple Green to rinse off the boats (Lido 14, Shields, or North American 40) after sailing them for a class, a race, or a trip to Catalina.

Subsequent waves of nostalgia followed: the greasy aroma of hamburgers and beer after the Wet Wednesday races, the tang or brackish scent of the small harbor where the boats were docked, the race we sailed in fog so dense we all took a turn as lookout on Avanti’s bow, and the times when I was greeted with a chorus of “Saaaam!”s when I finally met or rejoined the group after various absences whose purpose I can no longer remember. I confess that I bought a gallon of Simple Green years ago almost solely because it conjured up these and so many more memories, although the added bonus is that it works as well on land as it did on water.

Milk Monitor Carrier

The handled wooden box is always dark and moist on the bottom, glistening with milk that seems to always leak out of the supposedly sealed half-pint cartons. I enjoyed the freedom that came with the job, the daily escape from the classroom a few minutes before lunch, but I always hated the sour milk smell that permeated the small windowless room at the end of classroom block. My very infrequent memories of the scent still make my nose shrivel with distaste.

Milk monitors in Great Britain and Australia had the additional responsibility of monitoring their peers’ consumption of sometimes sour or curdled milk. Fortunately, I only had to pass it out to the kids whose names were included with each day’s delivery.

Santa Ana Winds

This is one of those scents you have to catch early in the morning, before all the moisture’s been leached out of the air and you can’t smell anything at all. First is the last vestiges of the cool morning air that’s rapidly warming up, followed by the rarely encountered smell of mature leaves blowing against each other–there’s eucalyptus, sure, but also additional green smells from the olive, citrus and avocado trees in the back yard–that aren’t as pungent or moist as freshly mown grass, but are still identifiably vegetal. The wind-chimes and rustling leaves add to the excitement that the Santa Ana’s always seem to bring, and there’s probably already a spiky-stemmed palm frond or two on the front lawn that needs to be carefully carted to the side of the house. Later in the day the smoke from the inevitable wildfires reminds everyone of one of the downsides of living in the Golden State.

Van’s Tennis Shoes

Rubber and new cloth and dyed canvas; oily creosote from the railroad ties behind the factory store. I got a brand new pair of red Van’s tennis shoes every fall, to wear with my tights and dresses and later, my brothers’ hand-me-down play clothes. At kindergarden recess, I would untie the laces so that I could watch them flutter toward me and away as I went back and forth on the swings. I always needed help getting them retied, but no amount of scolding could prevent me from doing it again. No other new shoes smell quite the same as Van’s–I’m glad to see that they’re still around.

Edited to add: Since I’d planned a trip home, I looked up the address of the old factory. I drove by there yesterday, and it’s no longer Van Doren Rubber Company, but you can see the bricked in space where we used to enter the store.

Pencil Shavings

The enthusiastic sharpness of wood shavings and the industrial classroom smell of lead brought into existence by the metal grinding gears of my dad’s pencil sharpener. When he worked late at night, I could hear its dull growling rhythm through the shared wall of my bedroom and his den.

Sharpening a pencil yesterday, I was struck by the same frisson of excitement which used to come with the privilege (or sneakiness) of getting to empty a nearly filled container of grey dusted wood crumbs into my grade-school classroom’s rubbish can, which was lined with a brown plastic bag. A small handful of us really dug the activity, and there was always a faint letdown whenever we heard someone else open the canister at the back of the room.