Who "Nose" ?

Have you ever stopped to realize how important your sense of smell is? I bet if you were asked to choose the order in which you rank the 5 senses, smell wouldn’t be at the top of the list. Yet ask anyone who has lost someone they love why they haven’t gotten rid of their loved one’s clothing and the answer is likely to be “well it still smells like him/her” and it’s a comfort to be able to have that to remember.

When I was a little girl and my dad traveled a lot I would sometimes go into his closet and bury my nose in his coat. Somehow that made me miss him less. It smelled like smoke because he was a smoker but I didn’t think about that being a bad smell. It just smelled like daddy.

Everyone has their own unique scent, a blend of the shampoo and toothpaste and soap and deodorant they use. When I was newly divorced, the first thing I did was change all the brands that we had used because those familiar scents more than anything made me think of my ex husband and that would make me cry or cuss depending on my day.

Or when my little Yorkie, Rambo died I couldn’t bring myself to buy the same dog shampoo for the new dog. The scent of that dog shampoo had the power to make me sad about his death all over again.

I remember my mom telling me years after my sons were beyond the diaper, bottle phase that when I was pregnant and the subject of breastfeeding came up I told her I was planning to do that because I had read the poop didn’t smell as bad as with bottle feeding. She thought it was funny that my priority was not the health benefits but the smell factor. I remember Mike telling me that I smelled like a new mom. I thought that funny and when I asked why he said that he said I smelled like baby powder, lotion and spit up.

When I would visit home as an adult, my moms house always smelled like red beans because she knew that I loved them and she would put a pot on everytime I visited. When I cook them now, it always brings back a memory of being in the kitchen with my mom, helping her make Sunday dinner. My ex husband HATES red beans and we had this agreement early on that I would not cook beans in the house and he would not cook fish (a smell I can’t stand). Visiting my parents in Kingfisher he would always say I hope you mom doesn’t make beans. But she always did.

I walked into a friends home the other day who has teenage boys. I didn’t realize that there was a universal teenage boy smell but there is. Her boy’s room smelled like a mixture of pizza, carpet cleaner, stinky feet, and sweat. I remembered that smell well.

I love the smell of rain. That’s probably my favorite scent. It never fails to bring back memories of when my boys were little and a rainy day meant an opportunity to use my creativity to keep them occupied. We could find all sorts of things to do inside when it was too wet to go out. So when I smell rain I always think of my boys and the fun stuff we did when they were little.

I love the smell of honeysuckle because it transports me back to my childhood..we had honeysuckle bushes all along our fence line and we had this old couch thrown out in the backyard that my brothers and I turned into a carnival ride. One person would sit on the couch, this dirty, stinky, mildewed couch that needed to be hauled to the dump and the other would rock it back and forth until you would tumble with the couch into the honeysuckle bush. I don’t remember the smell of the couch really, but I do remember the honeysuckle and every time I smell that scent it reminds me of my brothers and the fun we had as kids.

I hate the smell of vanilla which might surprise you since that’s a fairly popular scent. Once I was sick with pneumonia and my mom had all these vanilla candles (her favorite) burning and I could barely breathe and I was so sick. That memory comes back when I smell vanilla. But I eventually got used to the smell because she loved it so much and all her candles in her home were vanilla. A few months after she died one of my co-workers lit a vanilla candle in her office and I burst into uncontrollable tears. After that no one dared to burn a vanilla candle at the office. I’ve worked at the Hospice for 6 years now. Most of the people I worked with when that happened aren’t there anymore. A couple of weeks ago, one of the staff was getting ready to light a vanilla candle and one lady who remembered my sobfest said No, No, No. You’ll make LeeAnn cry. I had to tell the lady it was fine. The smell comforts me now.

And like the new mom smell there’s also the scent of old people. Old ladies smell like lavender or some other flower scent bathpowder. Old men always smell like aftershave, usually Old Spice. I like that. Oh, not that I would want to smell it on someone I was dating but I do like it when I get a hug from an old man and smell that smell. I think it’s a comforting smell and though I can’t swear on it, I think that maybe my Papa who died when I was 3 might’ve worn that scent. I always think of him when I get those old men hugs.

My son Andy and I went to the tag agency a few years ago and there was a man there trying to get his drivers license renewed but he didn’t have the correct documentation. What struck me was he looked like he hadn’t changed clothes or bathed in quite some time. When Andy and I left the tag agency, we spotted this man walking down the street. “Let’s give him a ride,” Andy said. “He looks like he could use it” I didn’t really want to do this but Andy was insistent and so I gave in. In addition to the stain of some sort that he left on the back seat of my car, for days I kept getting into my car and thinking “what is that smell?” It was horrible. A mixture of body odor, mildew, urine and mothballs. I finally sniffed it out and all that “funk” was coming from the small spot he had left on the seat. Surely we would have noticed how bad he smelled when he got into the car for his ride to the homeless shelter neither Andy or I noticed a smell. I think we must have been so caught up in our good deed that we just didn’t think about it. I scrubbed the spot and the smell came out. The spot on the seat wouldn’t budge. It annoyed me at first but I eventually saw it as a reminder that God wants us to Love our Neighbor, to be charitable.

The ride to the shelter was only a few blocks. The man asked Andy his name and how old he was. Andy told him his name was Andrew because he preferred to be called that. The man said he knew an Andrew. He asked my name and I told him and he said I don’t know any LeeAnn’s but I know a Leah, that’s pretty close. Andy asked his name and the man said it was Mr. Baptista. I thought that was kind of an odd name. When he got out of the car he said, It was nice to meet you Andrew and LeeAnn. Nice to meet you too Mr…… and Andy paused having forgotten the mans name. You can call me John he said. Have a blessed day.

Only after we drove away did I realize the mans name was John Baptista. Pretty close to John the Baptist I remember thinking.

Thinking about all these scents got me thinking about what it must have been like before air freshner and deodorant,and soap. …back in Biblical times for example. I’m sure people probably smelled as bad as we do today if we don’t bathe and use deodorant and toothpaste etc. But maybe because no one used those things that smell was normal for them. Think about Noah and the Ark and the 40 days and 40 nights on board a boat with all those animals. That must have been a major stink!!! But I’m guessing that Noah, like Andy and I when we gave the homeless man a ride, had more important things on his mind…like following God’s commands for example instead of worrying about the smell.

And who “nose”? Maybe that homeless man was an angel sent from God to check our hearts. If so, I’m glad he found them kind and giving.