DJ Gaskin
Prose (non-fiction)
Evening in Paris
I held the small cobalt blue bottle in my unsteady hand -- the coolness of the glass flat against my palm -- and I felt transported from this oversized antique mall, back to my grandmother’s musty bedroom, staring at the same cobalt blue bottle displayed before the mirror on her stained oak vanity. Then, moving up in time a bit, I found myself facing my mother’s mahogany dresser and, again, the same cobalt blue bottle.
Now I held a replica of this precious glass, a memory, someone’s …I wondered about the original owner, no doubt a woman like my mother, like my grandmother, a woman enticed by sweet scents. The smooth rounded bottle I now clutched still held the merest traces of scent, liquid remnant in the bottom of the bottle. Evening in Paris.
Some acutely olfactory oriented individuals swear they can ‘smell’ colors. Yellow smells of sun or summer flowers, warmth. Green evokes the scent of fresh-mown grass. And the scent of autumn, to many, is clearly a “red” thing. This sweet perfume scent -- this cobalt-bottled cologne -- is what ‘blue’ has always smelled like to me. And the sight of this bottle -- only 4-1/2 inches tall and just over two inches across its broadest width -- has always evoked memories of my grandmother, and, most intimately, my mother.
I recall my mother -- in my teenage years before I left her -- standing still in front of her dresser, mesmerized over an identical bottle, undoubtedly recalling her mother at every blue glance.
It was that connection -- my mother’s fascination with Evening in Paris -- that impelled my pursuit of this elegant vessel, brought me -- finally -- to be holding the cool blueness of it in my hand. I had begun to believe I’d never find one, was becoming convinced that none had been rescued from wherever used and empty bottles go once their owners are gone or simply tire of them. After uncounted years, I noticed my mother’s own Evening in Paris bottle disappeared from her dresser.
I had longed for this relic so fiercely, my search was heart-spurred, nothing less, certainly nothing more practical. I wanted, needed, to give my mother her Evening in Paris, to give her back an old memory and the gentle scent of her own mother. For years I had been searching through every antique shop put in my path, only to come up empty-handed. Until now.
And now that I’d found this bottle -- and with a drop of the scent still left from decades past -- I realized, as tears welled up in my eyes, that it was too late. Mom had died just a few months past. I couldn’t find that blue bottle fast enough. Now there’s no address to mail it to, no one there to uncap the bottle, breathe in the scent of a yesterday long passed, and call me up to thank me through sentimental tears.
It had taken so long to find the bottle, too long. Now, as I recently discovered, you can find one on the Internet, through online antique merchants -- dealers in nostalgia – and place a bid for one on eBay. A “mere” $45 on the Collecta-mania site buys you this one-ounce size containing the precious scent that “all the girls (and their mothers) just ‘had’ to have… the most popular scent of the era back in the 40s and 50s.” One ad boasts, “There is still cologne in the bottle, about 1/5th or 1/6th full.” Whose cologne? It moves the mind to wonder, to wander.
I can still see -- behind my closed eyes -- the image of my mother, balancing her weight on one youthful hip in front of her dresser, unscrewing the silver cap and tipping the bottle for just a tiny dab of some of the last drops from what was once her mother’s bottle, bringing her finger up to her nose to breathe in the scent before touching it to her neck, like she watched her mother do.
I let the visions fade as I stood nearly frozen in time in that antique shop. I could keep this bit of nostalgia for $20, the tag said. But I put the bottle back in its place. Back between a dirty green bottle to its left and some very ordinary looking clear vessel to its right. And continued down the aisle through this gallery, museum of antiques for the taking, this collection of pieces of people’s lives. I moved past costume jewelry -- silver birds and gold charms and other baubles -- once treasured by women with names like Beatrice and Doris and Irene, maybe even names like Verna and Jean and Birdie -- my mother, her sister, and their mother.
And suddenly I knew what to do with the bottle.
I turned around and in six long strides reached my bottle, held it again, then walked up front and handed it to the cashier reluctantly -- not wanting to let go of it again for even a moment -- paid the $20, plus tax, without a bit of bargaining -- watched it being wrapped in plain protective paper, carried it out in its tiny brown bag, brought it home with me, unwrapped it, and set it in the middle of the kitchen table.
Then, with my favorite pen and a piece of old but elegant stationary I rarely use now, I began to explain in a letter to my Aunt Jean the story of how I came upon this bottle, how I had meant it for my mother, and how I knew that she -- my mother’s sister -- would appreciate it no less.
Published in Good Old Days magazine May 2003 and compilation book Wonders from the Good Old Days 2005
© 2002 DJ Gaskin
