Sometimes I feel I need permission to breathe. When the taste of air rushes me headlong into memories, fair and foul. Yet, I still deeply inhale the air around me. I am starved for the oxygen. Margaret Atwood once wrote “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for the moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary”.
You have always filled my air as you moved through my life. I remember sitting in a lounge chair in searing sun, shading my eyes. I can still smell and taste the coconut and oil of Hawaiian Tropic you splashed on your skin seeking the perfect tan. Coconut and baby oil is an intake of passion. It raises my temperature and reminds me of days by the pool, in our thirties when were were both ready and willing. I can breathe lust.
I can walk down a street and smell the scent of cigar from a passing stranger and be transfixed by the scents of my grandfather sitting in his easy chair, cheap cigar in a holder balanced on his lips, gone out, him snoring. The smell of him is comfort and calm and a presence no one else ever manifested. He is peaceful and truly content in that resting moment. I can breathe calm.
Passing a bakery my grandmother is present in her ruffled apron, big dress and black, laced support shoes that would carry her from house to church each Sunday and back home to bake a fresh loaf of bread for the dinner table. I was mesmerized by the folding and kneading and amazing patience. The air filled with a tang of yeast or the warmth of baking filling my lungs. I would fall asleep on her single bed to the ticking of a Big Ben wind up clock like a hypnotic metronome. The scent of fresh bread filling my dreams. I can breathe peace.
I can smell the tang of fires igniting California and I am transported to a lakeside and wet towels hanging in mid-air where my house and all my belongings used to live, where I used to live. All that remains is dashed life, the death of cats and pungent smell of wreckage and detritus. I can breathe chaos.
I can smell the crackle of fat from steak on a grill. I am there across from you at the St Moritz Hotel at the south end of Central Park consuming a rich wine and Chateaubriand looking at one another. The air is filled with Paco Rabanne and Merlot and new romance making my heart shudder a bit. I can breathe love.
I can hold a newborn and breathe in the top of their head. It is at the soft spot where the skull has not yet merged, the unique waft of the child. Each is special, try it, you’ll know. I rock infants at a neonatal care unit and each one is different. They manifest warmth or fear or vulnerability in the inhale. Each soft purr of scent places me in the room with my daughter at her birth. Holding her skin-to-skin for the first time; knowing I would recognize the startling smell of cinnamon and strawberries that cap her head as I stare in her crisp sea blue eyes. I can breathe adoration and care.
I can smell the stale and filtered air of a funeral home with a open casket, and my father stretched out, cold with no scent. Alone in his presence there is just a vacancy of smell, the absence of air, not raising and lowering his chest, not moving and no discernible taste. I know now I can breathe the afterlife - it has no scent. But death smells, I consumed it when I gave him CPR, collapsed on my floor. I could taste the remnants of cigarettes and coffee passing from his lips to mine with every breath I gave him in hopes of revival. Yes, I can breathe death.
There is a taste to life. It comes in the breathing in and breathing out. It is filled with flavors and tangs and memories abound. It sits at the corner of inhale and exhale. It moves us forward or takes us on snapping trips to the past. I can breathe. It is my life. It is that unnoticed and that necessary.