Wednesday January 23rd, 2008
My kids. They smell like me. Or some version of me.
I pick up my toddler after I’ve sprayed perfume on my neck. Her skin connects with mine and the scent transfers. I give my oldest daughter a bath and use the same shampoo on her hair that I use on mine. Hours later, when it is still damp, I bury my nose to take in the same scents as follow me daily.
Their own body chemistry mixes with the perfumes and soaps and lotions I choose; their natural smells carry over through the fabric softener and detergents to create their uniqueness. I choose the food to feed my family that I enjoy; I choose the comfort scents of candles to fill my home. I sniff the bottle of baby oil in the market to make sure it is something that agrees with me. I buy it because I like it and then I use it. These things create a family scent, and a child’s smell that is almost undetectable to a mother.
It is not faint to others, but imperceptible perhaps to me because it is so like my own. These smells are the familiar, everyday scents of bedsheets and the backs of little arms, of the dolls that live in our home and of the pillows that grace our beds. They are the scents of clean hands and freshly dusted shelves, of lived-in-rooms and comfort-blankeys that can only be washed but once a month.
My girls are part of my genetic makeup. No wonder they are so familiar, their scents indistinguishable to me. I live within this home, and my own sense of smell has possibly become dulled. I help to create the scents and perpetuate them, constantly making my children smell more like the things I enjoy, but doing so out of habit. I don’t intend this, it just happens.
I pull one of them over on my lap. I smell her cheek as she looks at a book. She has her own scent, barely different from her sister, but unique. She eats the food I prepare, and uses the soap I provide; she sleeps in the bed I make for her. She is made from me and I take her in. She smells like she’s mine.
I love cuddling with my kiddos and burying my nose in their clean, freshly washed hair.
I have told you this before but, you and the girls always smell like “home”
love you
What an interesting thought. I need to go smell my kids. I am sure it will be a familiar smell.
I have thought this before. I notice it mainly, when I smell someone elses child. They don’t smell right, they smell fine, but not right.
Ahhhhhh. I loved this post! I love to cuddle with my baby and smell that familiar smell of comfortable!
Just wait until they hit puberty!
Just kidding—-couldn’t resist making a funny!
I love what your husband wrote in the comment section. Isn’t that special? Speaking of scents, that’s how I knew my husband was the one! (remember I mentioned he is a runner?—-well, he was the only male that I was not offended by his body odor. And 15 years later—I can still say the same!)
I love the beauty you remind of us in so many of your posts. I know I say this every time but you have such a gift with words!
Your daughter is so adorable!
This is one of my favorite of your posts, Sarah. It rings deeply true.
You should ask your kids what YOU smell like to them… my kids say I have a “smell,” and when they miss me for some reason, or are hurt and I’m not here, they pull out my white sweater. They say it has “my smell” on it.
What a sweet, unexpected gift God gives us – that mixture of scent, memory, and love that is somehow so wrapped up in family.