Vachon Imagined

When I was a child and my mom was working long hours, I found a way to get close to her even when she wasn’t there.

I would go into her closet and smell her clothes.

They smelled like her.

I was just a kid, but somehow I understood that her scent could give me something her physical presence couldn’t in that moment: comfort.

I’m 51 now, and I can still smell her.

Every time I’m around my mother, she has a fragrance. She is exquisitely conscientious about smelling nice, and in many ways, she is the consummate representation of what it means to care.

To care about your body.

To care about your hygiene.

To care about how you leave the world around you.

These things may seem small, but they don’t stay small.

They become memories.

Life is much the same.

There are memories we’d rather not discuss. Memories we’d rather not remember. Experiences we’d happily bury somewhere deep and never visit again.

And then there are the memories we pull out like trophies, the ones we tell with the enthusiasm of someone accepting an Academy Award.

The beautiful ones.

The funny ones.

The moments that gave us glory, beauty, joy, and happiness.

But that isn’t all of life.

It isn’t even close.

All of us, children, adults, every one of us, seek comfort.

We want someone close enough to tell us it’s going to be okay.

We want a hand on our back.

A familiar voice.

A familiar smell.

Sometimes, we want someone to simply be there.

But what happens when they aren’t?

I can close my eyes today and still smell my mother’s closet.

Decades later.

That’s the strange and beautiful thing about memory. It doesn’t always require the person to be present.

Sometimes, the presence is already inside you.

When my son seeks comfort, I remind him of this.

I tell him that when I’m not around, close your eyes.

Notice what’s passing through you.

And wait.

Sometimes he gets agitated.

“Mom, it’s boring.”

And I say, “Yes.”

“Be with that, too.”

Because silence has a fragrance.

We just aren’t always still long enough to smell it.

We spend so much of our lives trying to escape discomfort. We reach for our phones. We reach for another person. We reach for noise. We reach for advice, answers, explanations, distractions.

We want someone to tell us what to do with what we’re feeling.

But the wisdom isn’t outside of us.

It is already walking through us.

You can see it, ironically, when you close your eyes and let the world pass.

Let the thought pass.

Let the sadness pass.

Let the agitation pass.

Let the need to understand pass.

Let yourself pass.

Sit long enough, and something begins to happen.

The silence becomes a kind of communication.

Not a communication that someone else has to teach you.

Not something you need a meditation app to access.

Not something you need my writing to explain.

Not something you need to spend countless dollars searching for in a therapist’s office.

There is wisdom inside you.

There is a knowing that has been moving through you your entire life.

And you encounter it simply by sitting still long enough to notice.

That is another kind of memory.

Not a memory of something that happened to you, but a memory of something you already know.

A place you don’t have to be guided toward.

A place you don’t have to earn your way into.

A place that was there before you knew to look for it.

My mother’s scent is still with me.

Her clothes are long gone from that childhood closet, but somehow, the fragrance remains.

And that is what comfort really is.

Not the promise that nothing will hurt.

Not the promise that someone will always be there.

But the discovery that something has already been left inside you.

A fragrance.

A memory.

A wisdom.

A knowing.

Something that remains long after the moment has passed.

Silence has its own fragrance.

And just like my mother’s scent, it was there long ago.

It is there now.

And it will be there when everything else has passed through.

It is the comfort we are born with.

The magic we carry in what we say, in what we do, and, most importantly, in who we are.