Aroma Therapy II

When I stay in hotels I habitually bring home the complimentary shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, soap, sewing kit, shower cap, and anything else the establishment might offer. Usually I donate these to the food bank to make sure the items go to someone who will need, use, and appreciate them vs. filling up my bathroom cabinets with product which would go unused/untouched until the next bathroom cabinet purge (probably sometime within the next 10 years). But, (there's that famous "but" again) sometimes I take the hotel samples to the lake house for guests to use if they have forgotten toiletry items. Or for me to use if I especially like the brand, or scent, or if I just want to relive the vacation experience.

I am still hoarding a supply of shampoo and soap from the Hotel del Coronado. Every time I use it, the scent reminds me of the wonderful week spent there. I can close my eyes in the shower and almost hear the California surf when I use the little green bottles of hair care products in the fragrance - "the sea."

This morning I used little blue bottles of product from a stay at the Hilton Hotel in Virginia Beach, VA. I don't recall using them there, but I'm sure I brought them home and kept them for me because they were Crabtree & Evelyn brand. Today as I began washing my hair with the LaSource shampoo I was transported to my mother's bathroom of the 1950's. The scent was the same as the bubble bath she used; a scent I haven't smelled or thought of until today. Closing my eyes I could almost visualize the bubble bath bottle perched on the rim of the bathtub and I could almost remember the color of the shower curtain and the towels in that bathroom.

The hair conditioner in the same product line evoked another memory. This scent transported me to my early teen years. It was reminiscent of the Breck cream rinse which was diluted in a plastic tumbler, kept in the bathroom for just this use. Closing my eyes today and smelling the LaSource conditioner made me feel thirteen again and reminded me of how worldly and sophisticated I felt then to be using a product advertised in Seventeen Magazine when I wanted so badly to be a real, grown-up, teen.

I am always amazed at the power a fragrance can have over the memory. My sister and I have been know to phone each other just to ask if a certain scent summons any memory. The orange aroma of Goo Gone reminds me of something - I just haven't remembered exactly what. I am still trying to pin that memory down. The smell of canned asparagus conjures long ago holiday dinners at my Aunt Opal's. Fresh cucumbers, my Aunt Dee's house. New-mown grass will bring forth memories of my dad in his sweat-stained, faded red golf shirt with the little penguin over the left breast. Nina Ricci L'air Du Temps perfume brings forth memories of my mother so vivid I tear up missing her so. Once I even followed a woman through a cosmetics department because she smelled like my mother.

The little bottles of shampoo and conditioner took me on a pleasant trip down memory lane this morning and it was a trip that didn't even require a hotel stay.