REMEMBERING TO SMELL L’AIR

When I get dressed to go out, I’m always in too much of a rush to finish with a spritz of perfume. I started thinking about it more lately. I tried to remind myself to indulge in scents each day. I would choose, Organza on sultry evenings, Bulgari on meeting day, or I’d mix it up at different times, sampling through the collection of miniature perfume bottles I had on the bathroom shelf: Beautiful, Vera Wang, Chanel, Obsession. My close friend, Kathleen, just gave me a set of three antique miniature L’Air du Temps bottles. Two were full of that sweet elixir—no less seductive now, after 63 years.

One of the bottles had been used by Kathleen’s mother—although she left most behind. The Lalique bottle was the first of its kind to sport sculpture. It is a swirled vessel, crowned with a brace of frosted crystal flying doves. You twirl the doves to remove its cap. The age of the amber liquid inside made me wonder about the lives of the people they’ve touched—how many generations it has wafted through.

The first time I opened the bottle, I thought that maybe, if I dabbed some on my wrists, I might be transported back in time, through my life and the women that came before me. An antique scent.

I loved it for the same reason I love antique clothing and jewelry. I love connecting with beauty from other periods of time. Beauty has evolved, styles have shifted, sometimes back and forth. But each time has  beauty that is worth remembering. I love wearing it sometimes, mixed in with my regular clothes.

The L’air du Temps spoke to me one night, after I had washed up and was heading to bed. I dabbed some on my wrists, neck, and chest. I rubbed my wrists together, warming them and releasing the perfume molecules into the air, as I worked them into my skin. I wanted to sleep with L’air du Temps. And why not!? I wanted to drift off with those soft white flowers fluttering, the hint of salt, a drop of honey. I floated across to my mattress. These scents that usher me to sleep, imprint my dreams. My dreams are more vivid now.

I started putting perfume on every night before I went to bed. It was L’air du Temps most nights, for a while. One night, I had only a trace of the L’air left on my pulse points by the time I was ready for bed. I started to reach for the bottle to replenish the L’air on my skin, but then I turned and reached for another. I didn’t know what it was but I was attracted to its beautiful bottle. It was a weighty tear-shape—its belly made of cobalt rainbow glass. The only way you could tell its name was to squint and hold the edge of the bottle up to the light, at a certain angle, to catch the tiny etched letters, “Beyond Paradise.” I dabbed it on, right on top of the L’air. It was jarring at first sniff, but it quickly mellowed and settled into a happy hybrid.

When I am up and about, I find myself raising my wrist up to my nostrils and breathing in deeply, to remind myself, so I pump my olfactory…. To smell something beautiful now.