My patch of land is lush and green, and each day I pass the spot where his unbodied form lies under the tree, a circle of shells distinguishing that special place from the rest of the yard. I talk to him as I tidy, removing the sharp-edged leaves. I wipe off all the offerings—the little saucer that says, “Je t’aime,” the heart-shaped rocks, and the large, blue-veined glass marbles he collected that look like those pictures of planet earth as seen from outer space. The first year, I knelt down and talked to him more, telling him how much I missed him, how I wished he were here, how he was the best man. I would never pass by his spot without an endearment. As I enter my third year without him, I still cry out his name sometimes while driving past a place we had visited, still tell him how I ache for him, but less often. Sometimes, a few days will go by without our “conversations,” and I feel strange. It’s not guilt exactly, but I’m aware of a new evenness, the mysteries and complexities of a world that showed itself to me so often during that first year, fading. Sometimes, I stand near his spot and stare at the greenery that grew from the narcissus bulbs I planted there, imagining where he might be and in what form. Other times, I pause nearby and look up at the clouds, searching for messages, sometimes finding them. And once in a while, I am able to experience the silence as calm, even contentment.

How does one measure a life? In lovers? Children raised? Adventures enjoyed? Friends lost and friends found? Achievements at work? People helped? Which forms you the most? Upon which of these should one place the highest value in a late-middle-age tally? I think of Shakespeare, whose life might have been evaluated by his ability to move others with the power of words. He lived 450 years ago, only five or six human lifetimes. Using that criterion, he seems almost recent, and that spurs me to marvel at how quickly life changes. These were my thoughts as I drove to my perfumery class. It was the first time I had signed up for any group activity in over two years, so it felt like a positive step.

I am not the same person I was two years ago, and I am still perplexed by what this new life will look like. I tell myself that as long as I continue learning new things and meeting new people, I can reemerge in the world, wide-eyed and engaged. During Covid lockdowns, I kept fragrant flowers by the bed and took great solace throughout the day by bending down and smelling them, testing. Of all the Covid symptoms, I think I was most afraid of losing my sense of smell.  I often imagined experiencing the world chiefly through scent, like a dog whose ability to smell is more than ten thousand times stronger than our own. Such great olfactory power could take me back, in an instant, to specific times and places. Fishing with my father—notes of earthworms and blue gill scales.  My first kiss—freshly mown grass and Juicy Fruit gum. The first day of school—new shoe leather and pencil shavings. I wanted to move through that new, cloistered world of lockdown sniffing coffee or hyacinths, even sour milk or manure, all scents that were evocative, conjuring instant memories, reminding me that I was alive. And now, I felt ready for that version of immediacy and powerful feelings again.

In the earlier, shocked days of grief, everything was bursting with symbolic portent. Private rituals seemed absolutely essential. Everything in our home became sacred, especially the things his hands had touched. In the kitchen, I was miserly with the Tamari that remained in the last bottle he’d bought. I used the last of a three-pack of toothpaste sparingly, a sinking feeling coming over me when I saw it there in the medicine cabinet, flat as a ribbon, its tail curled. One day, to make the dregs of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint soap in his soap dispenser last longer, I gathered up all the tiny sample sizes of shampoos that we had saved from hotels where we had stayed on vacations over the years, and painstakingly squeezed each one into that dispenser. The liquids formed layers ranging in color from honey to buttermilk, a conglomeration that would work just fine for hand washing. The scent on his clothes was most precious of all, but I knew that was something I could not prolong. On the few items I had not given away, his scent was faint now, requiring more from memory and imagination than from my nose. What were these acts, superstition? Obsession with minutia? Rituals for healing? At the time, they seemed absolutely essential, and I followed all such impulses like one hypnotized.

The perfumery classroom smelled of hot chocolate and lemons. The teacher offered each of her six pupils a cup of the former, and we stood there, eying each other and blowing to cool the brew. Her name was Gwen and her cheeks were florid with enthusiasm, her passion for all things aromatic evident and contagious.  In the first ten minutes, the atmosphere in the room grew increasingly animated.

She wore a long, tiered purple dress and carried a peach-colored scarf that she brought up to her nose, inhaling deeply, from time to time throughout the class. This was her way of clearing her olfactory organs, similar to wine connoisseurs’ practice of eating a bit of white bread to cleanse their palates when tasting a variety of wines. Once we all took our places, Gwen gave us little squares of wool for this same purpose. We were animals after all, she said, and if we lifted the hem of our shirt or brought our collar up over our chin to smell the fabric, we might smell ourselves, and that would not help us to pause and start fresh, but rather send our smelling faculties in a new direction. She explained that we generally like our own scents, even the ones society tells us are “bad.” On some cellular level, the smells of our own bodies inform us about health or anxiety or arousal.

Our first assignment: “We want the oils to evoke a reaction as simple as, ‘I like that or I don’t care for that,’ and to run with it.” There was a notebook at each place setting, as well as a perfume wheel that described categories, such as woodsy, floral, spicy, resinous, and animalic. Three little wire stands held cards marked Top, Middle, and Base.

Right away I became sharply aware of the woman sitting next to me. She was younger than I, with a shimmering stripe of lime green eyeliner on each lid, and “Angela” was inscribed on her name tag.

Gwen asked us to say what brought us to the workshop, and to share our favorite scent. I said something about always having imagined being a perfume maker as my second act, and, while it seemed almost impossible to choose just one, the aroma of sweet peas made me swoon.  I thought a moment, and added how strange it was that I had never seen a sweet pea perfume or cologne. Gwen nodded, explaining that the sweet pea does not “give up” its essence easily. I found that intensely interesting: that flowers may or may not surrender their perfume, as if they had will. To impress upon us just how precious the distilled essences, called absolutes, actually were, she told us that it takes four million jasmine buds to make just one pound of absolute.

Angela whistled. When it was her turn to say why she was in the class, she said she was trying to learn new things since her husband had recently died. “I know this will sound strange, but he was so young and I have a young daughter and I was so panicked about my own mortality. Yet somehow, when I learn new things, I feel that I’m ensuring I will be here longer, so that I can apply the new things I have learned. That may not be logical, but logic isn’t a requirement for this class, right?  Also, my favorite smell, since I was a little girl, is gasoline,” she said, shaking her head. Everyone chuckled and smiled at her sympathetically. I liked her right away.

Gwen handed each of us many little strips of stiff white paper, similar to the kind spritzed at department stores so customers can smell perfumes without committing to actually wearing them. “Every fragrance in the world has three levels: top, middle and base. You can see that the oils here are separated into those three categories. Experiment. Explore. Put a drop of whichever scent appeals to you on a strip and take notes, so later you can choose which ones you want in your final creation. You need ingredients from all three sets to make a good parfum, and figuring out the balance and proportion is where the challenge is.”

After sniffing, we wrote down the names of the oils, noting the scents we thought we liked enough to use in the perfume oil that each of us would make and take home; we also noted the oils that did not appeal. I kept looking over at Angela’s likes and dislikes and was surprised at how different they were from my own. It was a simple equation for me: since we were both widows, we were simpatico and would become friends and naturally like similar things. But she liked patchouli and tobacco Absolute for her base, which I had relegated to the definitely-not side, whereas I responded positively to vetiver and Peru balsam.

“Remember,” Gwen said, “Your top notes are things like grapefruit, ginger, and Douglas fir—the first impression, and the first to leave. The middle notes are typically the florals, the ones almost everyone likes—ylang-ylang, lavender, jasmine, or rose. It will be hard, but I recommend choosing just two or three from the samples that you like best, so your favorites play off each other without your finished creation getting too busy. And keep in mind that it’s your base that holds it all together and lingers.”

“I like sweet pea too,” Angela said to me as I was writing “Nutmeg” on one of my tester strips. “What’s your favorite flower? That’s different from favorite scent, as you may know since I answered gasoline.”

We laughed. I had become shy, feeling a little crazy with all the stories I was telling myself about our future friendship. No one else in my circle of friends had lost their spouse, and I realized I’d been making a lot of assumptions about her. I was happy we were chatting.

“Lilac.” I answered without hesitation. She nodded, her eyes half closing.

“Lilac! Yes! How could I have forgotten that? I was going to say lily of the valley, but now I’m torn.”

“I know. It’s hard to choose. They all just want to be dazzling enough or smell good enough or have the perfect shape so they can get pollinated and survive.”

She sighed.  “Don’t we all.”

“And if I’m being brutally honest…”

“Oh, please be!”

“All right: if a flower is gorgeous but has no scent, I judge it more harshly. I think I give the fragrant ones extra credit.”

“They’re not your children, you know. You don’t have to love them all the same.”

“That’s a relief. I don’t want to hurt the feelings of a perfectly fine Dutch iris or tulip just because they’re lacking in the scent department.”

“It’s time,” Gwen said. She told us we were only allowed to use a total of thirty drops of scent in the oil vials she had prepared for us. “It will work best if you use ten drops from each set of notes. The middle scents are the heart notes, and actually define the perfume’s character, even though they only last a few hours. Your base choices will be the fixative and hold the whole thing together.”

“Is there a way to see how it will smell before we commit?” I asked.

“Not today. We don’t have enough time, unfortunately; but I think you’ll all love what you’ve made because you’re blending things you’re already drawn to.”

Someone shouted, “But I’m commitment phobic!”

“Then this will be a growth opportunity for you,” Gwen said, wryly.

I was decisive in my likes and dislikes and just had to determine the amounts to give each layer. I thought about what would make the initial impression, and what would linger and be remembered. I loved looking around the table and seeing everyone concentrating as they carefully dropped the precious scents into their small vials of oil. It intrigued me that some of them shut their eyes when they smelled what they had created, while others passed the vials back and forth under their noses, then stopped and looked up, considering.

“Okay!” Gwen said, clapping to get our attention after we began talking excitedly. “Now roll a bit on your wrists, and don’t rub your wrists together, that warms the skin, which changes the enzymes in the scent. Or, you can put a bit behind your ears, in the hollow of your neck, whichever is your favorite pulse point. Then let’s all smell our square of cloth to clear the olfactory overload. After that, we’ll walk around and smell one another.  Let’s see if you can guess the prominent notes in each other’s formulations.”

Being around so many new people at once, sniffing them and engaging my senses to such a degree, vitalized me. I noticed details about each person. One woman, who had eyelashes that were short and individual, no bigger than sugar ants, had created a scent that was piney and resinous. The woman whose hair was dyed three different colors made a scent that was herbal and sharp. The woman with a garnet stud in one nostril concocted a scent that was milky and infused with vanilla. Angela, whose nails were bitten to the quick but painted blue anyway, had created a powdery and narcotic scent. Walking around the table, performing a dance of arms and noses, we communicated in a litany of sensory questions. Magnolia? Spearmint? Frankincense? Cognac? Tree moss? Bitter almond? We were getting good at recognizing.

This was what I’d needed, but did not know I’d needed until today: a new language, another realm, a place that offered fresh memories.

Finally, Gwen thanked us. “If you like your fragrance,” she said, “you will be able to duplicate it whenever you run out, or even tweak the amounts you used, or maybe try something completely new. You have your recipe now, and can reach me for the essences. It has been a joy to see your delight in all this.”

“Really nice to meet you,” I said to Angela as we all prepared to leave. I didn’t tell her that I’d lost my husband too or say I’m sorry for your loss; but for some reason, I blurted out, “I like the smell of gasoline too.”

“Nice to meet you” she said. “The scent you made was my favorite. I smelled cacao and, what, rose geranium?”

“Bingo…amongst other things that I shall not divulge.”

Back home, I took the old cushion my husband had given me off the chair on the back porch. I’d been sitting on it all year without noticing how worn it was. After installing a new one that had been languishing in a box in the garage, I set the old cushion down in the grass and poured myself a glass of red wine. Swirling it around, I inhaled deeply, relishing the wine’s bouquet. Then I brought my wrist up to my nose, revisiting the pleasing fragrance that I had created.

A wren appeared out of nowhere and landed on the discarded cushion. The bird tugged at the cotton batting escaping from a tear in the fabric until her beak was stuffed, and she flew off to line her nest with the material she’d gleaned. It was spring after all, a time of hope and rebirth.

Recent Paintings

by Helen Bar-Lev

  Helen Bar-Lev has traveled extensively - especially in Africa and throughout the Middle East - and has come away with exquisite “pencil paintings” (as she calls them) from each journey. The painting here is of a town in Israel to which she has recently been evacuated, and, like all of her paintings, is a miniature, measuring approximately 11cm by 15cm (4.5” x 6”).

To view more of her paintings of Egypt, Ghana and beyond - and purchase them either as originals (for $350) or as signed and numbered prints ($20) - go to her website.

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