Aromatherapy

There is a scent, a wonderful scent, which is made up of the combined aromas of hundreds of bath/toiletry products in my bathroom cabinet. The scent is a combination of shampoos, soaps, perfumes, cosmetics, and other miscellaneous things women think they need to be beautiful. The scent is probably unique to my bathroom cabinet, unique because of the special combination of products. My mother’s bathroom had its own special scent as well. The scent in my mother’s bathroom was a mixture of L’Air du Temps, Dial soap, Revlon lipstick, Colgate toothpaste, 5-Day deodorant pads, Jergen’s lotion, Final Net hairspray and Pond’s cold cream. The scents combined to make an aroma unique to my mother’s bathroom.

Every once in a while I catch a scent that transports me back to my mother’s bathroom. It might be a sales clerk at a department store spritzing L’Air du Temps on potential buyers or the smell of Revlon lipstick when I uncap the tube, but it is enough to take me to another place and time.

When I was a young girl I loved watching my mother dress up to go out with my father. My mother was a beautiful woman and she knew how to make herself even more attractive with cosmetics and hair curlers. She normally went to the beauty shop every week to have her hair washed, set, dried, backcombed, and sprayed with enough hairspray to see her through the week. She slept on a satin pillowcase every night to further ensure her “do” would last. The night before her weekly appointment she would take out her black, stiff-bristled hairbrush and brush out her hairdo. She would brush hard and exclaim over how good it felt to brush her scalp. On the rare occasion she didn’t go to the beauty shop or if some emergency occurred (like taking her children swimming) she would set her own hair on black or purple curlers with white brushes on the inside. Those curlers where held in place by hot pink picks that appeared to be piercing her scalp. She would sit under the hairdryer, usually filing and painting her fingernails while waiting for her hair to dry. The first hair dryer I remember was a plastic cap attached to a hose that attached to a small machine that blew hot air into the cap. Later she upgraded to a dome-style hairdryer she sat under.

Watching my mother “put on her face” was an experience. My mother wore it all; foundation, powder, eye shadow, mascara, blush, lipstick and the piece de resistance – false eyelashes. My mother even wore her false eyelashes while dying of lung cancer at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

My mother was a wonderful, beautiful, classy lady and I love being reminded of her every time I catch a whiff of Jergen’s hand lotion or Final Net hairspray.