The other day when I sat down to contemplate sorting out my collection of pantyhose -85 liters of them to be exact- according to their class: fancy or everyday, season – winter, spring, summer or fall, all I´m gonna do is… – and condition: mint, to be thrown away, can be used with jeans (general raggedness, but still wearable), can be used with boots (damage under knee), can be used with skirts of certain length (damage over knee), can be used with pumps (damage restricted to toes, soles or heel, so that the shoe covers the holes): I came to the conclusion that the sins of the fathers do have a long arm indeed.
[Now, some of you might ask yourself, what does 85 litres of pantyhose have got to do with my dad and his supposed love interest? Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this. At least I think I am.]
In essence, I am a child of the depression, despite the fact that I have never lived in times really lacking food or other supplies. My parents have though, and ever since I can remember, they have recycled everything to the borderline of mania.
At one point my father even took out the hard plastic balls of the old-fashioned deodorant roll-ons’ as “you never know what you can use them for” - in fact he did find good use for them later so who am I to judge- and never have a seen a short enough cord made out of sturdy material that it would be deemed not fit to be stored and saved.
My mother set an example on how to get the most use out of socks – when heel is worn through one just flips the sock upside down so that the heel is on top – that my dear sister-in-law happily embraced.
[Now, some of you might want to shout hoarders! at the top of your lungs, but this is not the case. They only ever buy what is absolutely necessary. Contrary to their spendthrift offspring: me. ]
But back to my father and to the epitome of his philosophy of thou shalt not waste.
A couple of years ago I started to notice a strange, sweet smell lingering in the air at my parents house. Imagine what bad flowers – and I mean bad, flowers with darkest soul - mixed with rotting fruit smells like and you have the scent nailed.
This puzzled me greatly, as usually my mom does not use any kind of household products that are scented neither have I ever known her to use perfume. After a careful process of elimination I had traced the source of the scent to my dad.
This puzzled me even more. Questions were flying abound: a) why was my father subjecting people to this malice b) had he lost his sense of smell c) if he had still the full use of his sense of smell question a becomes relevant again d) could it be that he thought he smelled nice and e) if d was true and c was plausible as well, did it mean he had lost his mind and f) and most importantly: what on earth was he lathering himself with?
I had tried, very subtly, to question my mom about the smell and what was the source of it and did it not make her ears bleed to be sleeping and living with it, but I had gotten only a “you know your dad can be a bit stubborn at times and do you want another pancake dear?”, which I did, of course.
I could not let go, and as smells and scents are one of the most powerful memory triggers I dawdled to my dad, who was working on something at the garage, took a deep breath and prepared to be plummeted to a trip down the memory lane.
When I was a little girl, my sister – who is ten years my senior – bought me a perfume as a present from one of the trips she made with her school. I had entertained the idea of rosewater inside a delicate crystal bottle, something that I had most likely picked up from L.M. Montgomery books.
Instead I got a flat brown bottle, that held good 4o centiliters of somewhat exotic smelling eau de cologne. There was a sticker on the bottle depicting a long haired girl running on a meadow. The scent was named “The Far Away Love”. After couple of hearty splashes of the scent, the bottle was left to gather dust on the shelves of our bathroom.
Now as I was sniffing dad, a sombre suspicion rose: father had run out of aftershave and by a stroke of luck stumbled upon a substitute.
And sure enough, when I went to see if ”the Far Away Love” had survived more than twenty years of preservation, the bottle was still there, but this time there was not a speck of dust on it and it was more than half empty.
“Daughter! Don´t you dare throw it away, it functions perfectly well as an aftershave!” my dad cried out in protest when I stomped up to him with the bottle in my hand and a question mark in stead of my head. ”Are you deranged, you should not be allowed within a thousand meters of any living being wearing that equivalent of airborne toxic waste! Just watch me do it, old man!” I lovingly yelled back whilst pouring the stuff to the ground.
I would love to conclude the story by telling that it ended with us wrestling for the bottle, but instead I end it with this morale:
With this background, is it any wonder that sorting out pantyhose is always an undertaking.
ps. I love you dad. I love you mom.
