Scentzilla!

If you came for a perfume review today, I apologize. Wednesday and Friday will bring my impressions of Fath Iris Gris and Givenchy Amarige Harvest Collection. My friend Micki sometimes tries to prod me to open up and blog a little about myself, and well, I guess I think it’d be kind of boring to read, but she has other ideas. And her ideas are almost always good ones.

Yesterday I talked to someone who I haven’t really spoken with in nearly six years, which is the sort of thing that always puts me in an excessively nostagic mood. A walk down Nostalgia Street is one thing, but it inevitably leads me straight to the turnoff for Memory Lane. Ah me, what happened during those six years? And for the sake of this blog’s subject matter, what does my nostalgic sentimentality have to do with perfume?

My twins were born extremely premature (29 weeks) roughly that long ago, too. They were so very small, each weighing in at under three pounds. After birth, they were placed in a NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for nearly two months. In retrospect, I realize just how scary it all was, but I think at the time I must have been in a complete state of shock. In fact, the shock remained my permanent emotional state for a year after they came home even. They arrived home on oxygen tanks. They also wore fetal heart monitors 24 hours a day for roughly the first six months after returning home. I cannot properly explain the horror of seeing your son turn blue, and having to get him to breathe and help him get his heart started again. There are no words in the English language that express what that feels like. There probably aren’t ones in any language.

We were warned while they were still in infancy that they may well possess developmental problems. And they did. We found when they turned age two that we could no longer chalk up some of their diffuculties to the simple differences between how individual children blossom. Taking them into see a specialist at the hospital revealed they suffered from Autism Spectrum Disorder. The word “disorder” makes it sound as if they just need to be reorganized. I suppose in some very small ways that’s true, but not overall. My twins both had severe language delays. In addition, they had some physical problems and manifold tactile difficulties. The feel of many fabrics would make them uncomfortable to an untoward degree. Taking a simple bath was not a simple matter at all, because the wetness of the water would make one of them howl as if he was in pain. Strike that - not as if. He WAS in pain. Water, water caused him pain.

Their tactile sensitivities carried over to the sense of smell. I rarely wore perfume for the first few years of their lives. During therapy at the hospital, the boys were exposed to one technique that their physical therapist described as a scent therapy. Scent therapy consisted of little more than various objects, spices, and solutions in jars held up for them to smell one by one. The therapist then jotted down their reactions, and tried to get them to smell as many of these jars as she could during the session to “teach” them to tolerate their own sense of smell. We decided to discontinue this portion of their therapy after it became clear that it did more harm than good - it was just too overwhelming, and only served to frustrate them.

It was shortly after this time that I began breaking out the perfumes again on a regularish basis, despite their doctors’ warnings. I needed it. Really. It sounds completely selfish and trivial I suppose, but at the time I needed something nice to do that would be just for myself during those days, especially the hard days. When you’ve got twins with ASD, most days turn out to be harder than you wake up thinking they will be. The easy ritual of perfume certainly was one I’d always enjoyed. I missed it. Besides, they’d react to all sorts of things, yet lightly wearing perfume for my own enjoyment didn’t seem to cause too much distress for some unknown reason.

Then one day, something most wonderful and surprising happened. I had recently bought a bottle of Miss Dior, and was spritzing it on when one of the boys expressed curiosity over it. He signed the American Sign Language word for “more.” “Do you want to smell this?,” I said as held out the bottle for him to hold. He clutched at it and held it up to his face, inhaling with a smile. He tried with his little stubby hands to inexpertly spray it onto his chest, but failed. I peeled away his fingers to retrive the bottle from him, and soothed that Mommy would help. Onto his wrists I squirted out a weak half-spray. He recoiled at the sensation of liquid hitting him, but no tears. Nor did he emit any screeches of displeasure. The next morning? Same thing. “More.” So “more” I gave him, and his brother too, who indicated he wanted at a bottle of The Body Shop’s Dewberry sitting on the back of the dresser. Both again were repelled by the feel of the liquid, but a couple days later, they were lying in wait in the bedroom, waiting for the next perfume. CK One, and then Dazzling Gold. Dazzling Silver, Organza Indecence, Dragon’s Blood oil, Frangipani oil, Poison, Magie Noire, etc… I was running out of smells, and while they still reacted viscerally and slightly negatively to the perfumes, they kept coming back for “more.”

Their strong negativity towards strong scents seemed to evaporate over the course of months and years. And nowadays they happen to be the biggest six-going-on-seven-year-old perfume fiends I have ever known. I think they may have even adopted their own snobbish aesthete - they are quite particular now over what is “a good one” and what is not. I cannot fathom why exactly perfume gave them what a therapist and her empirical studies and techniques could not. But how grateful I am that something (read: anything) worked. For the curious, the six year old syndicate within our household has only but a very general rotation of favorites. One’s regulars include Caswell-Massey’s Lilac, Givenchy Pi, Galimard Sindora, Sephora L’eau Orange, Disney Pluto, and lately he wears Fruits and Passion Hot Dog a lot. The other still wears Miss Dior with some frequency, as well as Molinard Habanita, Weil Antilope, Lulu Beauty Gigi and Gres Cabaret. Not that they aren’t like their mother - the curiosity of what’s new to smell has become irresistable to them.

This also isn’t to say they don’t still have problems that need addressing - they’re still using special education assistance for things like language. Even an inconsequential incident like getting muddy while playing outside can wreak emotional havoc for the rest of the day sometimes. But their sense of smell has become a pleasure rather than a pain-inducing liability for them, and for that I am grateful. DEEPLY grateful.

I have decided I don’t at all care for your modern incarnation, but I must thank you, Miss Dior. Despite my distaste, I love that you’re still around.

If you wish to read an excellent (and neutral) review of Miss Dior in her modern form, please go to Now Smell This to read the lovely Robin’s impressions.

Image of Miss Dior with box from mydesignerperfume.com