I Want to Stop and Smell the Roses, But

I think I first noticed that something was wrong with my sense of smell when my English Leather didn’t smell right. For those of you young men raised on Prorosa or Truefitt & Hill Trafalgar and Dr. Carver’s Aftershave and other post shave “balms,” (how are young boys going to become men by applying balms instead of after shave which, when splashed on, sets the face on fire?) English Leather is a shaving lotion whose aroma wafted through men’s dormitories on Saturday nights in the sixties.  A totally unscientific study by me came to the conclusion that ninety percent of college males used English Leather.   The other ten percent grew beards and didn’t go on dates but stayed in the dorm listening to “Go Ask Alice” by The Jefferson Airplane.  There may have been other after shaves, French Leather or Bulgarian Leather or Uzbekistan Leather, but almost everyone used English Leather.

But forty something years after drenching my face on weekends in English Leather, I noticed that it did not smell the same. The odor of “rich Corinthian leather” had changed to smell more like stale beer puddling on a metal card table.  I also developed screwy smells.  On a car trip out west, we stopped at a diner in Missouri which featured good burgers but awful French fries that had seemingly been cooked in rancid oil first used in preparing the “Today’s Special—Crusted Halibut.”  You know how far away from fresh halibut is central Missouri?  For the next week or so, I could not remove the smell of that rancid grease from my nostrils.  I thought it odd, so I asked several doctors.  “As you age, some loss of smell (hyposmia) is common.” In my case, my hyposmia was followed by anosmia—the inability to detect any odors.  Years later, checking out my shaking left foot and learning that I had Parkinson’s, my neurologist confirmed that loss of smell was a symptom of Parkinson’s.  Now before you become worried because your chicken noodle soup smells like your kitchen mop after cleaning up from your spouse’s Beer and Polka Night, you should know that other things cause loss of smell—allergies, nasal polyps, viral infections, and head trauma.  Also check your chicken noodle soup.

As my anosmia completely erased any stimulation of my olfactory lobe, I began to miss things:  the earthy odor of a campfire in the woods, the wafting of honeysuckle in the spring, the warm, embracing, red-rich aroma of Italian gravy (sauce) simmering on the stove, the rustic whiff upon entering an Italian deli, the scent of a newly bathed and powdered baby.  I read once that one of the strongest memory recoveries is triggered by smell.  Before anosmia, I would walk past a bakery and into my brain would pop the experience of accompanying my parents as they purchased cannoli’s and pignolo and pizzelle and sfogliatelle and zeppole from an Arthur Avenue bakery in the Bronx.

Some people would argue that a loss of smell can be a good thing in certain situations.  I am not certain.  I am spared the olfactory childhood recall of driving down Route 1 in northern New Jersey past the Secaucus pig farms, and, years later, the assault on my nostrils when checking the boy’s lavatory for smokers, but even losing bad smells can be a bad experience.  Natural gas is odorless and colorless.  An odorant is added so people can smell a leak before the whole house suddenly becomes smithereens.  Big help the odorant does us afflicted with anosmia!  And there is no way to automatically spot a person that is hard of smelling.  No canes, sun glasses, seeing eye dog, hearing aid or similar gadget shoved up one’s nose.  We don’t have a sticker planted on our foreheads with a picture of a nose with a line diagonally through it.  Friends will say as we enter a garden, “Oh wow!  Smell those flowers, the lilacs especially.”  I just shrug my shoulders.  Usually Polley leans over and in a half whisper to them, “He can’t smell.”  I give my clown smile, turn the palms of my hands up and say, “I am hard of smelling.” There are other moments pregnant with embarrassment. Imagine a nice, high class restaurant with low light, dark polished wood, and fragrant flowers which I cannot smell on the table.  I order wine.  The sommelier arrives with the bottle and pours a drop (quarter of a drop in a French restaurant) of wine in my class.  He becomes a statue that could adorn Versailles and waits for my approval.  Now, if truth be told, I cannot tell the difference between a four thousand dollar Chateau Lafite 1865 and a six dollar Harry’s Basement Burgundy Vintage Last Friday, 8 PM.

Smelling the wine and tasting it for acceptability is a relatively modern custom.  In earlier times, Italians topped their bottles of wine not with cork but with olive oil. The host had the first glass to make certain that the oil was siphoned off.  In the medieval era, the host took the first sip to demonstrate to his guests that the wine was not poisoned.  So even though I cannot smell, I can serve those two functions.   Besides, I like the seeking of my approval, the ritual, so I swirl the drop of vino in my glass and stick my nose in it.  For some reason Polley believes that it is absolutely necessary at this moment to tell the sommelier and dinner guests, “He can’t smell.  He lost his sense of smell.”  The jig is up.  Exposed as a fraudulent smeller, I just sheepishly grin and nod my approval.  The sommelier pours and slowly and deliberately cracks a smug smile.  I employ my thought net and capture his thinking.  “I knew all along zis Amereecan peasant iss eh phony.  He iss a non-smeller!  Merde!”  When Polley does not give me away, I go through the motions, and, unless the drop has shards of glass in it, I approve. The nodding of my head to the sommelier signifies that there are no traces of Bertolli Extra Virgin and that my dinner guests will not topple over dead on the table from arsenic.  And, yes, people with anosmia do not enjoy the full flavors of food.  For example, sometimes wine just tastes red.

There are other dangers.  On a day scheduled for a major test, my honors class entered the room prepping and cramming for the exam.  Five minutes into the period, there is a fire drill.  This wreaks havoc with the administration of the test as kids gather in lines outside the building and discuss questions they have just seen.  I wish administrators would schedule these necessary drills on non-testing days, but there are plenty more things I wish for in education.

My honors class reenters the classroom and most of them recoil as if Bull Connor had turned a fire hose on them.  “Mr. Maltese, it really stinks in here!”

I ignored their protests.  I did not smell anything.  “Please take your seats and sit down and continue with the test.”  Five minutes went by.

“Mr. Maltese, I really can’t take it.  It smells awful in here.”

These were all good kids, the least likely to furnish an excuse for not taking a test.  I called the main office and asked for an assistant principal to stop by.  Mr. Jones opened the door of my room and promptly shut it.  I left the monitoring of the test and joined him in the hallway.

“Ralph, what died in there?”

I shrugged my shoulders and we moved the entire class and tests to an empty room.   More opportunities to exchange answers.  We found out later that day that the company which empties the lavatory storage pits scheduled an emptying during my class period, and there was some “ordinary spillage” outside my room. The school’s air conditioner sucked in the fumes from the spillage and sprayed them into my room.  Did not smell a thing.  Why the company did not schedule this activity for after-school hours is another of those great educational mysteries.

In my more reflective moments I try to recall smells.  My father taught me that one can find luxuries in nature if one only seeks them.  We were camping on a lush forest-encircled pond in the Adirondacks, the Madonna blue water icy cold from spring melts. We had spent a long sweaty day portaging the canoe and equipment to this spot. After washing my face, my father brought me over to a large spruce tree.  “You want refreshment?  Rub these spruce needles in your hands and then rub the oils on your face.”

I did so.  The scent lifted my spirits, filled my brain with a realization of the transcendent joys that nature offers us. The air in my lungs seemed sweeter, energy coursed through my body.  I was not only looking at the pond and the forest and the dark blue sky.  I was a part of all of it.  I would love to re-experience that fragrance.

But I am afraid that once anosmia sets in there are no restorative powers that can retrieve my sense of smell.  Perhaps someday someone will invent such a restorative power.  Until then I am left with fantasies of training a Smelling Nose Dog or some such critter, maybe a trained squirrel, that could convey to me the odors that I am missing.  Somewhere in my medicine cabinet is a ¼ filled bottle of English Leather.  I reach out to it at times with outstretched arms like Gatsby reaching out to Daisy’s dock, wishing to recapture the redolent past that recedes from memory.

If you are a smeller, for those of us who are not, take the time to stop and literally smell the roses.  Inhale and enjoy.