Scent memory

I got off the train this morning in Penn Station, not my usual entrance point to Manhattan, and immediately recognized the smell. It's not a bad smell, but a curious one - no matter the time of day, Penn Station always smells like fried food with an overlay of mustiness. And it's a powerful memory provoker. I think if you deposited me blindfolded on the platform for track 18, I could tell you where I was, even though I haven't commuted through there on a regular basis in about 25 years. It's that distinct a smell.

Last night, after a day of schlepping the gimpy Moky to doctor's appointments and tests, I thought a wee dram was in order. I opened the pantry liquor cabinet at my mother's 1909 house and was transported to every liquor store I've ever been in, again, by the smell. The liquor cabinet smells of wood and old dust and the essence of whiskey with a veneer of cork. And that wee dram, of Irish (not Scotch) whiskey, tasted oh so very good.

And this morning, as I helped my mother in the bathroom, I thought about the difference between baby pee and adult urine. Somehow, the baby pee never seemed to smell. Are the diapers that good? Is it just that there's so little of it?

The circle of life - from the mewling, puking infant to the second childishness born of aging. My mother diapered me, I diapered my child. The child is toilet-trained, my mother is regressing.

All things considered, her doctor's appointments were okay. Her general weakness is probably all steroid related, but she's tapering them off now. There's no evidence of blood clots in her legs, just edema. There's no evidence of a spinal tumor. Her blood work was perfect. We're keeping our fingers crossed that going off the steroids will result in a general improvement.