i want my mommy

Olfactory memories wafting in uninvited and perhaps imagined. I’m doing something or nothing and it hits me. Someone walks by or doesn’t, wearing her perfume or not. A soft breeze brings it creeping through the window, tickling my nose.

There’s two distinct fragrances. The first she wore when she was frozen in time for me, at age 29. The scent carries soft, billowing folds of muted gold satin as a backdrop against the skin of her thin, tan arm glittering with tiny gold flecks. Tenderness and safety overwhelm me in an instant. An instant that’s impossible to hold.

The second is the fragrance she wears presently. Something more grown up but equally sweet that permeates everything but provokes no images.

We stopped being mother and daughter and became pretend-friends many years ago, when she was frozen, aged 29. Curiously, I’m 29 now. And every so often, I long for her essence.