The SECRET of my sock drawer is actually SURE.

We bought our house six years ago this month. Of course, I know this fact, but I don't really think about it from year to year. Until it gets so hot that I reluctantly switch on the air conditioning for the first time. In an instant, it's 2006 all over again. I'll explain.


I'm an air conditioning hold out. I like to wait until it's super uncomfortable and Lu is boiling in her bed on the third floor. Then I break down while grumbling about the big old house I grew up in and its lack of central air. We were tougher. Never complained. (What I don't reference is the giant window unit we cranked at night and how when you walked by it on the landing of the stairs, you had to duck or get an arctic blast in the ear.)


To be honest, it wasn't just Lu's begging that made me budge last week, it was also Bunsen's old dog breathing, panting, gasping. It's very sad, but also intensely bothersome. So on went the air. And with it, a sudden involuntary flashback. It's crazy how connected our memories are to smells. The smell of our air conditioning (which isn't bad, by the way, just a subtle change) takes me back to our very first summer in Wayne, the thrill of a new home, new friends, new everything.


What smells bring back memories for you?


My childhood smelled like Bounce fabric softener, Pledge, Channel No. 5, Niagara starch spray and cloves. Also, the ever present (and probably brain cell altering) pool chlorine and the surely toxic old paint my dad meticulously burned and scraped from the exterior trim of our house. I remember talking with him through my bedroom window while he stood atop a ladder and burned and scraped, burned and scraped.


I started a subscription to Seventeen Magazine when I was thirteen. I think that's the way it goes. At thirteen, seventeen is an exhilarating promise. By seventeen, you're over it. It was the era of the scented Swatch Watch and there was a scratch 'n sniff ad in every issue. I swear, I can still summon that yummy magaziney scent! Here's the ad – thanks internet!!

In high school, we were all expected to embrace real perfume and I was never one to go against the grain. Even though I despise real perfume because my nose is so, so sensitive. Every "good girl" wore Anais Anais and every "public school boy trying to be preppy" wore Polo. Lots of Polo in the halls, on the bus, in the gym at the dance mixed with the pungent odor of glossy floor polyurethane. Polo to me will always conjure thoughts of nervous hands clinging and awkward, rhythmless swaying among bleachers.


My eventual high school boyfriend (not him again!) didn't wear cologne. But he did wear the same deodorant, Desert Spice Sure, every darn day for years and years and years and that is what I love about him – the consistency, the commitment and the smell, which was nice and desert spicy.


Fast forward to our first years of marriage. Without warning, Desert Spice Sure was suddenly gone from the grocery store shelf. What's a wife to do? Several additional, yet unsuccessful, retail excursions were followed by a lengthy phone call to the Proctor and Gamble consumer hotline only to learn that Desert Spice was discontinued, gone forever. Fortunately, Jon had hoarded a few so he (we) had the chance to slowly say goodbye while gently phasing in new brands.


When he got to the very end of the very last stick, I stole it. Now it sits in my sock drawer. 

I know you're questioning my stability, but one whiff delivers an avalanche, a deluge, a vivid barrage of memories. Good ones. First love mostly and the feeling of being young, happy and hopeful. With this sweaty guy.

Jon's parents are purging their stuff. We now have lots of photo evidence and newspaper clippings documenting his sporting career and other gems like a VanHalen 1984 wallet with nothing but a phone number stuffed inside. Play-ah!

Most people find salty beach breezes and sunscreen memory-inducing, as well as evergreens at Christmas and apples in the fall. 


We're getting a new car at the end of the month. I took it for a test drive and it totally comes with that new car smell, which is very chemical in nature but strangely reminiscent of rice pilaf. I've been saying that for years.


There's also bug spray and camping trunks lined in cedar. Charcoal grills. Garlicy bagel shops that remind me of a silly summer job. The very occasional waft of tobacco smoke and visions of my Pop Pop sticking his pipe behind cables that ran along our church's stone wall before plodding inside for Sunday service.


College was all about stale beer and patchouli-wearing-earthy-types seeking expensive liberal arts degrees. And Tranquil Breezes, the melon and cucumber lotion from Victoria's Secret that I'm sure they no longer sell. Loved the way it mellowed the stale beer and stood up in both principle and soft fruity coolness to the stinky "hippies." (No offense to any of my friends who had a hippie stage.)


Lu was born in January and I happened to have a Yankee candle that was minty and sweet. Every winter, I try to track it down, but they've changed the name more than once. Frustrating. It's "Jack Frost" now, maybe? Whatever it's called, once lit, it evokes memories of our first tentative steps as parents, of tiny, tiny diapers and baths in the kitchen sink, of hibernating indoors, of watching my baby sleep and weeping from the ample hormones and awe of it all.


When I'm a very old lady living in a posh nursing home (thanks to consistent, committed Jon and years of conservative saving), I will have my nurse fetch my Desert Spice Sure or light my minty sweet Yankee candle no fewer than ten times each day. Then I'll close my eyes and do some sensory time traveling. Then I'll get a pedicure, eat fancy caramels and read a book. Aging is a privilege. If I make it to a posh nursing home, I'm totally living it up!


P.S. A clever headline that also rhymes = heaven.