“Attached to its odor memories, a childhood smells good.”  (Bachelard, 140)

Pipe tobacco.  Scratchy brown sofas in every room, green wallpaper always made me think of Napolean.  The front room with the best bookshelves but not allowed to touch.  The secret back bedrooms.  Mixing clay, letting it run through my fingers and letting a thin layer coat my hands and harden.  A jar of candy orange slices, slightly stale, the crunch of sugar between my teeth.  Seashell soaps in bowls, too many for one room.  Petticoats in every color on a rack in the spare room, so many things we weren’t allowed to play with.  Erasers in every shape, puzzles, perpetual motion figures.  The stack of every Serendipity book, sitting on the floor with Bratty in my lap reading them to her on Saturday afternoon, one after the other, and that one picture book of Sleeping Beauty–even then I thought there was something a little off about that story.  She was too much a victim, the ultimate fantasy of a woman subdued.  Such a sharp contrast to the Twelve Dancing Princesses, in the beginning anyway.  Fairy tales again…