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.

FORGIVE & FORGET? OR OFF WITH THEIR HEADS?

So Tiger is spreading the love even though he has a wife of six years and two children. When a beautiful woman like Erin cannot keep her husband satisfied it makes one wonder. Who can? If success, fame, fortune, health and love cannot keep you happy then what can? Tiger is THE numero uno golf player in the world. He is at the height of his career, he has a beautiful family, he has everything anyone can ever want. Respect, success on his field, money, EVERYTHING. And apparently everything was simply not enough. Is it men as a gender who have an inability to stay faithful in spite of everything going well? Or is it more human nature?

What does it take to cheat? It is a disregard for that other person’s feelings? A need for instant gratification without regard of long term consequences? Is it carelessness? Is it loneliness? Horniness? Is it because that other person is offering something the person you chose to share your life with cannot give?
Or maybe is it because society places such a burden on marital rolls. Men are expected to be hunters, gatherers, providers, brave, romantic, strong yet sensitive like in the movies and women are supposed to be nurturers, sex kittens, cooks, mothers and everything in between. Who can fill such shoes? No one. We are all left dissatisfied because we have unrealistic expectations of the people we married and expect them to make us happy in each facet of our lives.

Although rationally I understand how difficult it is to remain faithful to someone until death, emotionally I don’t have any tolerance for the issue. I understand how hard it is to completely satisfy someone else, in and out of bed but how do people get past the sense of betrayal, the anger and the hurt? How do they move on? How do they open themselves again to the person who did the one thing they promise not to do in front of friends, family, the law and for those who believe in that, God?

In my family’s case forgiveness did absolutely nothing except for extend the humiliation and make more obvious the inability of my cheating father to commit to the woman he married and promised to love until death, the woman he chose as his mistress or the children he had with both. In which circumstance is forgiveness a good idea? I have been shown forgiveness when it comes to cheating is just a form of denial and silly hope that things will change.

In situations like these I wonder why would anyone marry? It’s such a risk, such a gamble, such an irrational promise of love, commitment, faithfulness and loyalty that we give too freely and without taking into consideration that there might come a time when we will be able to break it. Back at home almost all my friends had parents that were cheating on their spouses. Let me rephrase that most of my friends had cheating dads. Is it a Hispanic thing? Or are all men potential cheaters? Does it have to do with nationality, status? Or simply with having a dick?

Are women simply more discreet and conniving enough (don’t fight it you know we are) that we’ll cheat without getting caught? Or is it that we simply are brave enough to admit defeat and end a relationship before it gets to the point of cheating?. For men is it a case of wanting to have the cake and eat it too? (an expression that makes no sense to me because what else could you do with a cake if not eat it?) Or is it that their fear of confrontation (don’t bitch you guys know it’s true) keep them from facing the truth of their failing relationship and it’s simply easier to look at greener pastures without permanently leaving the farm?

We all dream (secretly or openly) about that breathtaking love that will last forever, epic and with a soundtrack, we all want to be Noah and Ally, or Lizzie and Mr. Darcy, Anne and Captain Wentworth, Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head…but how realistic is it to really be with someone for 50 years without forgiving some step outs?

Every time I see a couple that has been together for 20 to 50 years I always wonder which one has cheated, which one has forgiven. I haven’t decided yet if that makes me a cynic or a realist. I guess anyone can cheat and anyone can be cheated on. Maybe everlasting love isn’t about a perfect love but loving in spite of fucking cocktail waitress and spending too much time on the phone or leaving the toilet seat up.

I rather think Mr. Darcy loved Lizzie all the days of his life and never looked at another woman the way he looked at her. I rather think Dear Husband will do the same.