Mom's Purse

Did you ever notice how you can sometimes get a whiff of something in the air and right away it reminds you of something or someone, or someplace?  A lot of my childhood memories seem to be tied to my olfactory senses.    Usually when I have one of those olfactory moments it's quick and intense with a vision flashing through my head and then quickly fading again.  Memories of visiting my grandmother's home, how her kitchen smelled in the winter as she was cooking grandpa's breakfast or making herself a cup of tea.  Visions of my dad shaving in front of the bathroom mirror which he always finished with a splash of Old Spice, or memories of my mother taking a tissue from her purse, spitting on it and wiping dirt off my face.

Mom's purse had a unique odor which I can't describe.  I suppose it was a mix of make up, lipstick, those used tissues, a pack of wintergreen chewing gum and lord knows what else.  Even though I can't put the scent into words, I'd know it if I ever smelled it again...and I have a few times.   I think the inside of her purse was a lot like my grandma's, but my grandma's always had a sort of overriding aroma of peppermint from the roll of Tums she usually had in it.    Mostly, the contents of a woman's purse remain a mystery to me...even after 66 years of life and 45 years of marriage.

Having your face wiped with a spitty Kleenex sounds pretty gross, and I suppose it is (and was), but at the time it was just something my sisters and I endured.  Most often that impromptu clean up  happened in the car.  Hmmm?  I wonder if that is where the phrase "spit bath" originated?

The vision of mom reaching over the top of the front seat in the car and making last minute corrections to our hair  or making sure our faces were clear of any "spots" was just something that happened...it wasn't a surprise, it was expected and had we objected there wasn't any way to get away from her anyhow.  For such a short woman she seemed to have an infinitely long arms when it came to reaching into the back seat, whether she were reaching back to tidy us up before we got out, or needed to swat one of us.

When I learned to talk my grandmother Robinson was Meme to me and she retained that title through all of the following 23 grandkids.   Meme's house was special and always full of smells and those odors still bring back memories of being there.  There was a winter smell, and a summer smell...they were similar, but not quite the same.  Meme didn't need scented candles that smell like baked cookies, or fruit...she got the effect naturally.  Baking cookies and making jam.   Besides all the good food aromas that went through the house there was something else, not sure what....maybe just a "lived in" smell.

Winter was something different.  There were still all those food smells but the old oil furnace in the basement added a sort of earthy undertone.  When I was still a small child there was one big heat register in the floor that sent warm air up into the living room, where it spread out from there.   It was nice to lay on the floor next to that big register in the floor and soak up some heat on a cold day.   Sometime later they had a blower attached to the furnace and some ducts put in and closed off that giant register...maybe they put in a new furnace, I'm not really sure.  For humidity in the winter Meme set an ice cube tray full of water in front of a couple of the registers and refilled regularly.   They had really hard water so the trays were always covered with heavy lime deposits after a few weeks of use.

You were often engulfed in the aroma of frying bacon waking up in the morning at Meme's.  Toast was always a breakfast staple at their house...toast with butter and some of her jam...and those jams were always a sort of mystery...she used fruit that was available and often combined them. Things like Strawberry-rhubarb,  or Mulberry and rhubarb.  It was at Meme's house that I first tasted sassafras tea and it was made from roots she dug herself under a small sassafras tree that grew in a fence row south of the house. A small spade and an old butcher knife was all she needed.  I suppose I could still walk to the spot where that little tree grew, but sadly, that fence row is long gone.  In fact most fence rows in the Midwest are gone, victims of industrialized farming. Fence rows use space that is more valuable for crops, and removing them makes use of giant equipment easier.

My grand kids won't even understand the concept of a fence row or realize what has been lost.  Fence rows contained such a variety of wild plants... wild grapes, the occasional tree, grass of course, milkweed and other wild flowers of every variety, poison ivy and they sheltered lots of wildlife of the smaller variety.  Rabbits, quail, pheasants, song birds, field mice.  In the winter they caught the blowing snow which piled into great drifts along the fence rows.    There were a lot of fence rows then,  an 80 acre plot might have been broken down in as many as 3, 4, or even 5 separate fields, some connected by small grass covered lanes...today that same 80 acre plot is often combined with another 80 acre plot to make one large field with no fence rows to be seen anywhere around.