temporal scent

Posted on 14. Mar, 2011 by Princess Lasertron in personal

I wear three kinds of perfume. The first, Lolita Lempicka, I bought in college around the time I started dating my last boyfriend before I met my husband. I wanted something to commit to, and the expensive apple-shaped bottle represented a definite decision–”This is my perfume.” “This will be the scent that makes people think of me.” When I wear it now it reminds me of my exciting, spontaneous single years–at a different party every night, being led through back hallways by friends who snuck me into 21 and over shows, laying awake with my friend Hollie texting the boys I liked. I felt grown-up wearing good perfume. When I pick it off my shelf today to spritz through my hair, I still get a rush of that feeling of freedom and potential.

The second, Viktor and Rolf’s Flowerbomb, I first saw in a gigantic beautiful display in a window at Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin. I embarked on that trip to Europe a few days after I first met my husband. It was love at first sight and I thought about him every day just as I walked by that Flowerbomb window display every day. The day I got home, June 15th, I met up with him straight from the airport and we haven’t been apart since. On our first vacation together that year, to Chicago, I bought a bottle of Flowerbomb and carried it in my shoulder bag (given to me by that previous boyfriend), wrapped in tissue paper, as a treasured souvenir of two vacations. The scent reminds me of our excitement and passion in those early months of being together and the security and happiness of being married to my soulmate.

Yesterday I bought the third scent I wear–Marigold by Royal Apothic. It is less expensive, simpler, and lighter than the other perfumes I have worn in the past. Today I was holding the thin bottle in my hand, reading the beautiful black and white label, and I realized that this scent is meaningful for this time in my life just as my others have been. Everything from the simple, singular, delicate fragrance to the diminutive bottle and light yellow striped box represents the natural, trusting, unaffected relationship with my daughter, my first months as a mother. It’s a scent that is uncomplicated and lovely and fresh. It connotes youth and pure curiosity and I hope it will always bring me back to sitting in my rocking chair in the presence of my baby.

Three is a magic number.
xo
meg