Scented Memories

Smelling IVORY brought back many memories for me, some of the time in my mother’s kitchen. We moved into a new, pink ranch house at 100 White St, when I was 5 years old. It was a showplace to many people at that time. There were pink marble bricks surrounding the fireplace in the living room (which we never ever used), modern appliances in the kitchen including a washer and dryer hidden behind folding doors and most impressive, a Radarange (microwave). People would come to our house and watch in awe as the microwave would boil water in a glass bowl in only a few minutes. There was always the smell of soap lingering from the laundry area behind the folded doors. The kitchen was 1960s modern, with plenty of storage behind flat birch cabinets and a double sink under a window looking out at the front yard and street. Lazy Susans held the food in each corner cabinet and special silver built-in compartments held the aluminum foil and Saran Wrap in the wall. There was a “pass through” as we called it to pass the food from the kitchen to the adjacent eating area. But it was the smells in that kitchen I remember the best, the chicken browning in the oven, the vegetables sautéing on the builtin range and the lingering smell of soap from the cleaned clothing swishing in the washing machine. My mother also often smelled like Ivory soap when she didn’t smell like the fresh onions she was chopping for our dinner. She always wore either a housecoat or an apron to protect her from the assault of the complicated ingredients she wrestled with following the newest and best recipes of the day. We were served healthy, well balanced meals presented neatly on our melamine plates. First course was grapefruit or melon, second course was a protein with a starch and green vegetable and dessert was jello or fruit salad. I don’t remember any snacks in the house, no rich desserts or cakes. My father owned a supermarket so we often had lamb chops or steak, neither of which I liked very much, I preferred hot dogs and hamburgers. I was often reminded of starving children in China which failed to make me enjoy my meals more.
There actually were snacks in the house, hidden in the bottom of the break front in the living room. Boxes of chocolates which my mother received as a gift from guests or bought to put out for company. I would sneak into the living room and liberate the boxes of candy quietly, not knowing which ones didn’t have any gooey fruit stuff inside, I would poke my finger a little inside and taste each one to try to decipher its’ contents. I would feast on a few that met my expectations and try to replace the ones that hadn’t so no one would notice. I suspect my mother at sometime found out about my dalliances but she never mentioned it.