Scent Memory

Last winter, it got cold in Germany. There were a few wintry nights with temperature levels that made it into the news back home in Pennsylvania.  It was during the end of my first semester, after Christmas, and the skin on my hands kept cracking in the cold. To try and keep the dryness and pain at bay, I put lotion on my hands each morning before I went out, and once again when I returned in the evening. I used one particular kind of cream, and didn’t think much of it at the time.

This morning, my hands were a bit dry. I rummaged through my bathroom bag hanging on the towel bar in my room and found a tiny container of the same lotion I had used last winter. Rushing out the door with my backpack on one shoulder, keys and water bottle in the other hand, I rubbed some of the lotion on my hands and walked swiftly to class.

I took my seat at one of the tables arranged in a rectangle, all seats facing in. We started discussing the welfare system in the US and the policies put in place in 1996, and as the lecture got started, I put my elbows on the table in front of me and laced my fingers together, rested my chin against them.

The smell of the lotion reached my nose. With my eyes open, I saw the classroom swim away. I saw crosswalks and pigeons and the train station sliding out of view from the bus window.  My head was leaned against my hands which were folded on top of my backpack. I could smell the instant coffee from tiny mugs in the Uni Mensa (cafeteria) and see the sidewalk sparkle under a thin sheet of ice in front of the math building.

As I looked down at my notebook in the classroom, I could see past the desk to the tips of the boots I had stolen from Claudia growing darker and darker grey from the slush at the bus stop.  When I pushed my glasses up my nose as I took notes on the welfare system, I remembered how my glasses didn’t fog up with the heat when I walked into the stairwell leading to our apartment since there was no heat in the halls, but that they did fog up when I opened the door into our kitchen.

For some reason, I feel very absent from here today. True, this scent memory is a big part of it, but I also think I go through cycles of living here. At first, it’s a vacation – exciting and new. Then it becomes every day life. And now – today is one of the days that doesn’t make sense to me. The friends I spoke with and experiences I had in Mainz are still so close to my heart. The me that I am now, that me which changes every year bit by bit, is more comfortable in an apartment than in a dorm room, perhaps more comfortable in Germany than California. 

The point is that today, my mind was far enough away from here that it only took a small breath of the scent of the perfume to send me back. And it made me wonder if in five years, when I smell eucalyptus somewhere, I will remember today and my time here just as strongly.