Perfume Pilgrim

My Nanna regretted a little that her hands were no longer as smooth, but to me they were like butter, the butter we used to layer on cardamon and cinnamon yeast buns together. There wasn’t too much to say this time although we saw each other every day of my recent short visit except to cuddle and sit close as my 83 year old grandmother chided me for the gifts I brought or for not eating more of her lovingly prepared food. How can I put into words the love and gratitude I feel so deeply for her, the appreciation for the wardrobes full of clothes she has sewn for me over my lifetime.

She sewed her first dress when she was 12 years old to attend a school dance. Even now she shared with me that her hands have held thousands upon thousands of fabrics over her lifetime. Each time she fingers a fabric a little of her scent remains on the material. For every new outfit she made I could smell her. How was it that her body perfume pervaded every piece of material, even now?

In between cooking and sewing and sewing and cooking she nourished and clothed all her five children with raiments of love, made in the most fashionable materials and latest designs. This continued with her over 20 grandchildren and even her great-grandchildren and a great great grandchild. My grandmother had boxes of shiny buttons and baskets full of perfume, mostly avon, but some french perfumes, as well as Diorissimo. You gave me my first perfume, a little avon roll-on shaped like a native American Indian girl. Now, I tried to give you some perfume from Paris, but you said you were too old to wear perfume. But who needs perfume when your own body exudes a scent of sanctity?

She was always giving and never taking and nothing has changed. A lifetime habit of over generosity persists. Try refusing something, anything from her at your peril, she may even start to cry and her heart might break. There were some foods even on this visit which you wanted me to eat, including ice cream and chocolate. I never visited you without discovering your stash of chocolate myself or being offered some, but the chocolate cherries you kept secret. How is it that there is always spice cake in your freezer or  fresh on the table, with cardamon, cinnamon, all spice and pepper? How many times did I gorge myself on raw yeasty dough out of impatience for the baked buns? Or overeat the easter rye porridge made with treacle, lemon and orange peel, doused in thick cream, which I still crave.

In the evenings we would sit on the swing by the pond, perhaps after having a sauna and inhaling the aromatic wooden panelling and feeling so clean. You would tell me stories about your childhood or mine. You still remember so much, like the wonderful six months you lived in Finland with us in your father’s cottage perched high on a rock in the countryside. You remembered picking wild strawberries and blueberries in the forest nearby with my brother and I, and him eating all his berries then tipping my basket over too. You made sima or fermented ginger lemonade with bobbing swollen raisins floating within, which we drank in the summer.

You never mentioned your sufferings to me, though I am sure you suffered deeply. You have always been so pleasant even if you have worried for others and with so many descendents, that was a lot of worrying and a lot of loving. Nanna, to me you are even more fragrant than a heavenly perfume, and more generous than a queen. Your food and clothes have become my flesh and bones and I am proud to be a descendent of yours. I know you worried from the moment you saw me last week about the day I would leave and whether you would ever see me again, seeing I live on the other side of the world.  But I feel so close to you, even now I can smell you and you are in all of me. All of me is thanks to you. You mentioned hoping to see me in the heavenly realms one day if not before and I wondered how I might ever say goodbye to you. I can only tell you that to me you are still so beautiful and so near to me that I can’t imagine ever being far from you….

If you were a perfume Nanna,  there would be zingy notes of ginger, lemon and wild berries. A heart of roses and lily of the valley and  and a base of vanilla, cardamon, forest woods, fir and honey and I would wear you every day.

Images: The top was taken when my Nanna, Liisa Soininen was in her 20’s. The one below was taken last week on my visit to Australia, now aged 83.