The aroma of spearmint chewing gum just opened, fresh from the wrapper, takes me all the way back.
I have been thinking of my mama a lot lately. She unzipped her black purse, reaching down deep inside for a slice of chewing gum, both of us seated on the wooden pew in that little Baptist church house all those years ago. Some might call it a bribe to buy the silence of an impatient child, but God and Mama did not seem to mind.
It is marvelous to me, mystical even, how scent travels with us through the decades, marking pivotal and even rather unimportant moments in our past so that we can revisit them with the fondest of memories.
The intoxicating combination of aerosol hairspray blended with perfume steals me away, once again a little boy sitting on the blue Formica vanity in Mama’s bathroom watching her run her perfectly manicured hands through her auburn pageboy. She brushed her hair with one hand while spraying it with Aquanet or Miss Breck hairspray until we were both lost in the haze. I shut my eyes and still see her leaning into the mirror, applying several coats of her favorite lipstick, blotting in between with tissues left behind showing little pink colored imprints of her lips. I pretended they were little kisses left just for me, a sentiment not too far from the truth.
A favorite reverie of the first person I ever loved, I would lie in my bed as a little boy with nothing lighting the room except the narrow light from the big blue bathroom. Mama was shut away behind the door making herself pretty as I then imagined, more likely hiding from four sons and her husband for a few stolen moments. I could hear her humming a song now and again, then the pages of her favorite magazines flipping as she sat quietly in her warm bath. The heavenly scent of her perfume wafting through the rooms of our little stone house filled my nights with peace, knowing she was only steps away, a scent that for me would become Mama’s own.
I waited for it when I was an expectant child; I long for it now that I am left here without her.
She was my Valentine, my one and only first true love from as early as I can remember and for as long as I will remember. I told my kindergarten teacher that I would one day marry my mama, a harmless fantasy more than a few sons have entertained. It warmed Mama’s heart. I was her baby. She let everyone know it. Neither of us felt like apologizing.
My Valentine’s Day wish for all of you is to linger in those moments when your true love visits, whether in the flesh or only in a memory.
Email reaches former Columbus resident David Creel at [email protected].
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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