It all started with a visit to Aroma Sanctum to see my friend Akuura who creates a special blend of perfume just for me that gloriously envelopes me everywhere I go. We talk about the power of scent, how powerful our noses are, and our favorite memories of our grandmothers' kitchens. All this talk about how things smell, including me, reminded me of several stories.
I'm at a preschool on one of my visits. It's "Play With Auntie Amya Day" and today I'm teaching them duck-duck-goose. Japan is not known for geese--I've seen none in my 20 plus years here--so before the instructions can be explained, we spend time establishing what a goose is. We all settle on a "big duck." I'm the first goose, and "duck, duck, duck" several kids before pegging one "goose!" and proceed to run in a wild circle. I'm caught, so I start over. This time I slide in, just barely, to the spot vacated by the goose and am cheered by the kids. A great miracle, indeed. The goose just stands there, and I pick up on the fact he's too shy to go out on his own. I get up, lean towards him and ask if we should "duck duck" together. He nods shyly. I asked quietly so it's our secret. We touch heads together but I let him whisper "duck, duck"and we make our way from kid to kid. I soon become the adopted goose, a defacto Mother Goose of sorts, and I make the way around the same circle with each gosling, "duck-duck"ing everyone.
I lean down towards one girl as the gosling and I "duck" her head, and she leans up, craning her neck towards mine and says, "You smell like my mother." I melt. Pure words of acceptance, those are. I'm touched. Since that day, whenever I'm in her class she comes up to me leaning in for a hug and smells my neck. "You smell good." I love this.
At another preschool, the focus is on my nose and not my scent. Since childhood, the size of my nose has been a commonly discussed topic. The most used phrase is, "Your nose is high." High, as in a tall building, or as in someone who's tall. This is not the same as "You have a big nose." High does not mean big. I've not grown up being told I have a big nose. This is important.
We're playing tag in a (different) preschool playground one day, and a boy runs past me and says the words I've never heard to date, "You have a big nose." I practically fall over. I almost call back "HIGH! Not BIG!" but don't. He doesn't mean it the way it sounded. He means well. He's five. Let it go.
To noses like mine, whether they're considered big or high, scent matters. Sean Connery's words about the American Express card, spoken in a television commercial twenty (?) years ago, "Don't leave home without it" applies to perfume for me. I do not leave home without it. Ever. Which is why, evidently, this one taxi driver needed to point this out to me.
Whether or not I end up talking with any given taxi driver is like rolling the dice. There's no pattern. Some days I'm hit right away with a "You're foreign, right?" comment, while others won't say a word. On this day, the driver saved his questions until the last thirty seconds. About to pull up to the corner where I asked to be dropped off, he looks at me in his rear view mirror and says, "You're not from here, are you?"
"No," I smile. "I'm not."
"You know how I knew?"
Do I want to know the answer? How bad can it be, right?"
"No. How?"
"You said 'hello' when you got in the car."
What?? This is news to me.
"People don't say 'hello' when they get into your taxi?"
"No way."
I ponder this. While I'm mulling this over, I hear, "And, you smell."
"Really!?" I must have sounded really shocked.
"Not bad. You smell good. But, you smell. Like perfume."
This conversation took me back to another taxi driver's comments about how he almost didn't pick me up (following that statement with a quick bow and an apology). "I picked up a foreign woman once before, and..." bowing again, "...she smelled so bad. I had to air out the taxi for hours to get the smell out." I'm flattered he picked me up, after hearing that.
Whoever it belongs to, the nose knows. For better or for worse, the nose knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment