SMELL AND MEMORY

According to Sarah Dowdey of www.howstuffworks.com “A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the "emotional brain," smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously. Bear with me I am going somewhere with his, I promise. “Despite the tight wiring, however, smells would not trigger memories if it weren't for conditioned responses. When you first smell a new scent, you link it to an event, a person, a thing or even a moment. Your brain forges a link between the smell and a memory. When you encounter the smell again, the link is already there, ready to elicit a memory or a mood”

I smelled home in the air this morning on my way to work and I’ve spent all morning feeling homesick. I cannot remember the last time I even felt homesick (probably last Christmas because firewater always makes me homesick and weepy) or maybe in my civil wedding this year when I couldn’t enjoy the company of people I wish were there with me. As much as I felt the painful twinge in my heart I couldn’t help smiling. The smell was some sort of soapy, clean, disinfectant smell that reminded me of a bathroom (a private one, not a public one) and I really cannot recall what the moment was but it made me think of a trip I made to Colombia one summer almost 15 years ago. It’s amazing that I am now old enough to have 15 year old memories (Eeeek!) but also amazing is the fact that I can recall the moment on a flash of smell. I remember how I felt that moment. I couldn’t recall the day, or whose bathroom it was, but I remember the sense of expectation for the vacation days to come. I remembered the wondering what I would do with my time and the books I would read. I remembering feeling love, for the place, the people I was with and hot with the sticky Colombian summer.

I spent this last weekend alone with Dear Husband in California doing some business stuff and I sat on my couch watching TV and feeling homesick. For two whole days I thought I was just missing Dear Husband and our depressed dog Zoey wasn’t helping matters much with her “I-miss-daddy” puppy eyes. Then I realized I only felt like that (down and a little depressed, and therefore hungry) when I was seating on the couch. Dumb that I am I didn’t notice that the smell of our Christmas tree was making me miss Christmas at home. The smell of dog and pine and freshly cleaned house was bringing memories of home.

I still miss home so much. I miss the music and the people, the plans, the city that shines blindingly on Christmas, the Avila Cross that sits on the mountain, turned off all year and then lit up brightly for the whole month of December and that looks like it floats on the air at night, when the mountains are so dark they blend in with the night sky. I miss the chilly air and the chilly mornings, I miss the Christmassy billboards and the 15 foot blow up Santa one of the banks put on its building climbing up to the roof to leave some presents. I miss the Gaita concerts, with songs we’ve all heard before a million times and still make us want to cry. I miss the grapes, and the preparations, I miss the smell of the city, a combination of pine, smog and food. I miss my home with its high view of the valley and how it seemed to glow all twinkly at night with the city bellow us shinning green, red and yellow full of Christmas lights.

I wish the smell and the barreling emotions that come with it would give me a warning instead of swallowing me whole in bittersweet memories of moments lived so long ago but I still remember as if they were yesterday.

One of my exile buddies living here in Florida after leaving Venezuela posted in his Facebook how depressing Christmas is away from home, how he misses the celebrations that start in December and don’t end until half way January. It’s not just the parties he misses, but the familiarity, the sense of belonging. His immediate family, like mine, it’s here in the same city and even though it feels ten thousand times better now that they are here, we are all still castaways during Christmas time, away from all familiar, drifting around listening to jingle bells and eating turkey instead of listening to danceable Christmas music and eating hallacas.

Nothing, not even being away from home can ruin Christmas from me. I took a deep breath Saturday of my Christmas tree smell, the sweet, sharp, crisp and clean scent made my heart weep for all left behind, and the twinkling lights mocked my mood. Ahead we move all the time, leaving behind precious things that will never come to be again part of our lives. Thank God for the sense of smell that won’t let us forget.

THE ETERNAL MYSTERY OF U.S. HIGH SCHOOLS

At lunch today we were all discussing our memories of prom night. Some were dumped by their boyfriends, others (like me) had the guy they liked showing up with their ex girlfriend, and another had their graduation so long ago she had to waltz with her father as a tradition. When you work with someone from Argentina, Puerto Rico, Bulgaria and New York, recounting war stories from high school can get pretty interesting. As it happened my prom night memories were pretty similar to everyone else except of course for the New Yorker.

School here is so different from back home that is like a parallel universe I’ve never visited and not matter how many times it has been explained to me it remains confusing, scary and clouded in an almost science-fiction-like fog of mystery.

It has always baffled me how school works here. From electives classes and going to different schools for each phase (elementary, middle, high school), to the school districts things by neighborhoods and homecoming parties and prom queens and kings. Back at home you don’t get to elect your classes, even if math is not your strongest area, you still have to suffer through eleven miserable, terrifying, traumatic years of algebra, geometry, arithmetic and my nemesis… trigonometry. Fucking trig I still have nightmares about it. When I watched TV and teenagers said hi to each other tentatively in school saying “You are in my history class aren’t you?” I never understood what they meant. Back at home we got a classroom assigned with other 30 to 40 students, you get assigned a seat at which you are to remain for the rest of the year and teachers come to you. Back at home you have no choice but befriend your classmates, you spend five days a weeks, 6 to 7 hours a day in a classroom with them, breathing the same air, sharing the same torturous math teacher and forced to work in groups. You sit in the seat next to someone for 6 to 8 hours for five days weeks and you learn to like them whether you like it or not.

I was the new girl on my sophomore year in High School. Since wretched math was kicking my ass I had to change schools to one that allowed students to choose if they wanted to spend their last two years learning social or science studies. Since the left side of my brain is stunted and never developed I went with social and spent my last two years in heaven with classes like French, Latin, Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology, Art History, English, and the right side of my brain enjoyed the party while the left grew cobwebs.

Whenever I think of high school here I remember how easy it was for me to change school and make friends. I had a blast on my last two years in high school and I shiver to think how much harder it would’ve been here. I was the new girl in a graduating class that had been in the same school since elementary. I was the new girl among teenagers that had seen each other for eleven years, five days a week. They knew each other’s grandparents, cousins, they knew each other secrets and had memories dating back to the time when some were still sucking thumb. Here it would’ve been impossible for me to befriend them since I don’t make friends easily, but back at home was so easy because we were stuck with each other all day.

Here is so different! Prom is before you actually graduate and the parties are unsupervised and at hotel rooms… I can’t even wrap my mind around it. Our graduation party was the day we got our diplomas and we work our dresses and suits under our gowns, we partied with family members and friends until five in the morning at a rented hall, had dinner, a champagne toast (even though most student were under 18 and therefore not allowed by law to drink). We partied as if it was a wedding, with a DJ, a photographer, a band and flowers. The party was the last time I saw some of them and a big way to say goodbye with a bang. It would’ve felt sort of anticlimactic if I had to see them all the next Monday after such a celebration.

Here you dress up, rent a limo and go to a hotel room to have drunken sex with a boy who has no idea what he is doing. Even if things were done that way back home parents would’ve never allowed their kids to go to a hotel room after a party. Here let me pay for hotel room where some randy teenage boy is going to pop my little girl’s cherry. Riiiiight.

Doesn’t anybody notice how simply wrong that is? *She says failing at trying to sound non-judgmental* Don’t get me wrong there were plenty of people that were sexually active at my graduation, but that didn’t mean we were allowed to celebrate our high school graduation party at some random hotel room without adult supervision. Back at home even the most rebellious rebel wouldn’t have dared to smoke in school property. There, school grounds are almost holy grounds and you don’t fuck around with school ground, you don’t graffiti, have sex under bleachers, smoke, drink, and give birth in bathrooms.

My poor cousin had to finish her high school years here and she was once almost took a mint from a guy who offered without knowing he was giving her Ecstasy. She saw people getting high in the bathrooms and I can’t even imagine getting away with smoking a cigarette at my old school, where the Spanish (from Spain) priests had eyes like a hawk and would know if someone skip school and called your parents if you talked back or misbehaved.

I love this country and I am happy to be here but I am also happy that I came here when I did, with two years of college under my belt and that I didn’t get electives that were going to keep me from meeting my friends, I am happy I didn’t have prom king or queens. I am glad I finished school back home where my graduation class was of two hundred people instead of getting lost in a sea of anonymity in a class of a thousand like my cousin and two of my friends.

I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to celebrate getting out of school by going to a hotel room to feel pressured into having sex with some pimply inexperienced boy with sweaty hands who didn’t know the clitoris from the anus. Amen.

SEASONS CHANGE & SOON THE HAPPIEST TIME OF YEAR!!

I don’t think most people here realize just how amazing it is to be able to enjoy watching the seasons change. Most people here take for granted the breathtaking coloring of the leaves, the white pristine snow that cover their cars, bloomy spring that comes and greets you when you’ve had enough of white and gray and blistering summer when you are yearning for the beach. They rather concentrate on the leaves they have to rake, the salt to break the ice, the allergy from the pollen and the humidity that comes with heat. Ungrateful bastards you all! (Sorry, I am bitter).

Oh how I wish I could enjoy some snow fight and catch some ticks on the leaves (I read somewhere they love dead leaves) or walk under full bloom cherry blossoms in DC and…well to be honest I could give up summer for a while. I know people in cold weather envy the Florida heat, ignorant bastards all of you (again I apologize) but believe me there is something to be said about change. About pulling out the boots and gloves, and thick woolen socks and scarves. Something to be said about wishing for spring so you can wear that cute white summer dress you didn’t get to wear as much as you wanted.

There is no break in this Florida monotony. No kaleidoscope of colors, no white to the horizon, no romantic and tragic naked trees, just green and green and green and more green. Back at home we didn’t get a change in season; we got hot summer with cool breezes and no humidity and lots of rain and then blissful chill that lasted for months.

I don’t think there is anything as frustrating for me than to go shopping for a Christmas tree when is 89 degrees outside. So freaking discouraging! How is one to choose a beautiful tree to light one’s Christmas if is blistering hot outside? Last year I had to wait until almost the 20th when it finally got chilly (Florida chilly) the nerve, the fucking nerve!!!

But no matter, there is no weather wretched enough to ruin Christmas for me. Hell, October ends and I get the tingles! What is going to make this Christmas more special than others is that I am married this year for the first time and you know what that means? Only one set of gifts from the both of us!! I knew there had to be something good about being shacked up (I kid, Googly Bear, I kid).

Every year Christmas gets here and I go a little crazy. I admit it, there are worse problems to have than this. I am one of those psycho people who are done with Christmas shopping by Thanksgiving and is totally broke in January because of the 12 foot tree she jammed in her living room. I go all out, I go insane I even buy presents for my cat Max who cannot possibly celebrate Christmas since he is the spawn of Satan and that would make no sense... And the worst is (for those around me not for me) that I don’t consider Christmas just the 25th of December, for me Christmas is to be celebrated for the entire month of December from the 1st to the 31st!! *She gives an evil cackle* I sing carols at the office, my iPod plays nothing but Christmas music and Dear Husband hates me because he ends up with: -“Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling too. Come on is lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you. Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling ‘Yoo-hoo’ Come on is lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you!”- Stuck in his head until May.

I tell you, you people have AWESOME Christmas music. I mean don’t get me wrong I have wonderful memories of my dancing to my Christmas music from home but there is just something so typical Hollywood and United State-y to the music, so cheery and happy and I can feel myself going crazy already and I can’t wait for December to start!!!! (Yes, all those exclamation points are needed). Poor Dear Husband is probably already dreading the month to come and my obsession with it. I guess is because I am myself a Christmas baby I consider the whole month my month.

I am flabbergasted every year when I see the 27th of December, sad looking trees thrown carelessly on the front porch of some houses, littering the sidewalks and just thrown there, ignored without dignity as if they didn’t matter as if they hadn’t gifted them with hours and hours of shiny sparkly color. I name my tree every year (hey, don’t judge) and every year I feel the loss when is time to say goodbye and I am holding onto one end and Dear Husband is pulling the other screaming “It’s February!!” Sigh, good times.

Back at home Christmas starts sometime in October and doesn’t end until late January. We enjoy the hell out of Christmas, with concerts, food, more food, drinking, never ending dancing, shopping and some more food. Back at home Christmas is a black tie event. Even if you are just throwing a party at your own house with the three members of your family (which is impossible because we are Hispanic) you still dress to the nine to welcome baby Jesus and the New Year. We don’t wear jeans, or cotton, or flats. We do our hair, our nails, our makeup and in full attire gorge on pastries filled with pork, beef and vegetables.

Here you have Christmas during the day, which is so odd. We first of all celebrate Christmas Eve so the 24th we spend the day preparing, getting ready, cooking last minute, finding shoes to go with the outfit and then around 10 pm we start eating and drinking and dancing and then at midnight we wish each other a Merry Christmas.

On New Year’s Eve we wear yellow underwear, eat 12 grapes for 12 wishes for 12 months, we carry money for a prosperous New Year and carry suitcases around so the year to come brings some traveling. We dance until our feet weep and vow never to wear the shoes again that go so fabulously well with the outfit we purchased to wear that day.

I have seen friends here welcome the New Year in their PJs. That is unacceptable! What kind of year can you expect ahead if you welcome it on your Hello-Kitty slippers and your hair like a nest? Hell New Year it’s so damn important that even Microsoft Office 2007 knows it because it won’t let me put it on lower case!

Back home and now here, in foreign land we choose to spend them with family because that’s how we want your next year to be, around family and friends, surrounded by love ones, with plenty of food, money, travel, adventure, awesome clothes, looking beautiful and full of hope for the things to come.

We are only 16 days away from Thanksgiving and we all know that means December is around the corner.

Poor baby, get ready!!