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Vanillaroma Take Me Away

I was riding my bike around this little sleepy neighborhood, with more visible construction workers than actual residents, when I smelled it. Out of the side sliding door of a white van I detected the familiar smell mixed with the upholstery, cigarette smoke, and heat in the air - it was most certainly a Vanilaroma tree. We are hundreds of miles and a few decades away from the nostalgia to which this scent transported me.

Gas was 99 cents per gallon at Jersey Oil. My friends and I mostly drove hand me down cars from our parents, or a practical, barely functioning version of what we could all afford at the time. It was cool to know how to drive a stick shift. It was ok to scoop ice cream, bus tables, or fold sweaters at the Gap in order to make enough money to buy that gas and some Taco Bell after school. When Spring Fever started creeping in you could smell the story of these teenage owned cars in the fabric of the seats - intermingled with the musky flavor of your tree of choice. Mine was always vanilla. The door opens the simplicity of life goes wafting around in the warm breeze.

Indoor tanning lotion, cigarettes bought in a neighboring town so my parents wouldn't know, Pert Plus, Degree deodorant, fast food, Sunflowers... it's the scent "playlist" of my teen years. Now at 36 when I catch a whiff I just want to relish that one moment. Just stop the bike. Close my eyes. Spin around like Jennifer Garner in some movie from 2001-ish. And wish for simplicity. Not that I would want to give up the life I have now - I am so fortunate. But I do wish I breathed a little deeper back then and gave more appreciation to those precious moments. I wish that I could guarantee that my son will have the same happy nostalgia that wells in my chest at moments like this.


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