Occasionally I cross post articles from my author blog to my genealogy blog and back. This is one such article. The original can be found here: https://donnahechlerporterbooks.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/the-joy-of-soap/ and was first published on December 8, 2016.
I really should get out more. I should probably shop more. (But I probably won't.)
I know this to b
e true since the most exciting thing that happened this past week (except for the cat dangling by one foot from high in the Christmas tree) was finding out that The Vitamin Shoppe not only carries Dr. Brommer's Castile Soap, but that Dr. Brommer himself (is there such a person?) has rose scented liquid soap.
e true since the most exciting thing that happened this past week (except for the cat dangling by one foot from high in the Christmas tree) was finding out that The Vitamin Shoppe not only carries Dr. Brommer's Castile Soap, but that Dr. Brommer himself (is there such a person?) has rose scented liquid soap.
My heart nearly left my chest. I can not tell you how thrilled I was! This was even more exciting than finding the aisle with the soap only to realize that they had more than the overly large size which was the only size HEB carried. So, when I found the rose soap, I was already riding a high since I was not going to be forced to shell out $10 for a bottle of soap that lasted me months.
Of course, by now I am certain you are thinking, between me and my nutty animals at the house, that I have lost my last marble.
Or, my last bar of soap.
Actually, the answer is simpler and more mundane than that. You see, my paternal grandmother, Eleanora Ressler Hechler, always had the smell of rose soap in her bathroom. Although, I must admit that I was not aware of the scent until several years ago. I was somewhere doing something (maybe a rare shopping trip?) and I smelled soap (or something) that smelled just like her bathroom.
Since then, I have been on a small quest of sorts sniffing soaps and other smelly things for the smell of a rose scent. 'Tis not been easy. For some reason, this is not a scent that is used much these days.
I do love having small reminders of my family around me - my antique hutch that belonged to my great-grandmother Lily Corinne Gray Griswold, my antique traveling trunk that belonged to a Whitehead or McQueen and probably came from Tennessee or Louisiana (or further parts unknown), the dresser that belonged to my great-grandmother Anna Lee Whitehead McQueen, as well as dishes, butter molds, and on and on.
But smells? Well, those are different, and they are very powerful for pulling forth memories and feelings of past events.And yes, for some reason when I smell the scent of rose soap, I am taken back, albeit briefly, to not only my grandmother's bathroom, but to a simpler time when I was a child with few cares and my grandparents were still around.
In the case of rose scented soap, I am reminded for just a minute, no matter how brief, of not only my grandmother's bathroom, but the glass knobs on her doors, the la
ce curtains that lifted and waved inside the living room as the wind caressed the house, her large rooms with wooden floors that my feet pounded on as I ran through the house. And of course, there was her voice yelling at me not to run, and then as I headed for the door her admonishment to grab a scarf to keep my ears out of the wind.
ce curtains that lifted and waved inside the living room as the wind caressed the house, her large rooms with wooden floors that my feet pounded on as I ran through the house. And of course, there was her voice yelling at me not to run, and then as I headed for the door her admonishment to grab a scarf to keep my ears out of the wind.
Yea, I am strange. Who could get that much from the smell of rose scented soap?
Maybe my animals are not the only nutty ones around here.
Maybe it's a good thing I'm a writer, so I can put that over active imagination, er memories, to good use.
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