Sure Smells like Christmas...

I've been putting off doing Christmas cards for several days now.
It's not that I really mind doing them. After all, it is the only time most of us reach out to old friends that we don't want tossed overboard on the sea of time. The folks that you shared a job, neighborhood or foxhole with at some point, but it was so long ago that you're not certain there's enough left to sustain a phone conversation. Well, at least a few of them fall into that category. The rest are just on the list.


I always know it's time to do the Christmas cards by the smell of the decorated tree down the hall. It's funny how the sense of smell is one of the more powerful touchstones that we have yet we relegate it to a lesser status. People never mention "falling in love at first smell". No, it's sight and hearing that get the nod when it comes to romance but smell can be the most powerful stimulus of all.

There was a girl in my fourth grade class; her name was Joan. She was gawky, skinny and not especially good looking but she used to wear some (probably cheap) perfume that was undoubtedly of the dime store variety which made me swoon whenever she walked by my always messy fourth grade desk. I have no idea what it was, but can recall it to this day and would most assuredly marry her on the spot if I were not already off the market.

Whenever I smell Carter-Hall pipe tobacco I invariably look for my dad. It was his smell.

Sometimes a scent can haul up nearly devastating emotions. In 2001 just a couple of days after 9-11 my wife, Linda, nearly died from complications involved in a liver operation at UCLA Medical Center. It was one of the darkest periods of my life. I would spend my days visiting her in the intensive care unit and then return to my hotel in the evening to watch non-stop TV coverage of the tragedy in New York and Washington, D.C. This all came close on the heels of a sudden cessation of thirty plus years of hard boozing. In the words of Rodney Dangerfield, "It was rough I tell ya!" To this day...whenever I catch a whiff of the liquid soap that all visitors were required to use before entering the ICU, my knees buckle and I have to brace myself. To my nose and my brain it's September of 2001 all over again and it scares the bejesus out of me.

Then there is the olfactory stimulant that has laid waste to more wallets than any tax collector or woman of the evening. The smell that leaves you with a mountain of monthly debt and nothing but heartache after the "new" is gone. I refer, of course, to that most expensive perfume...the NEW CAR smell. Try not to succumb to it this Christmas. Not even if they promise you that big bow.

Time to sign-off. Linda is baking and I smell Christmas cookies.