Smoke

I did today’s prompt from WordPress last year, so I asked Meta AI to give me a prompt… Something unusual. Something people wouldn’t think to ask.

The prompt is “what is your biggest smell memory from childhood, and from where did it come?”

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The station wagon was an older model, cream with a red interior. I sat in the backseat watching my grandfather smoke his pipe. I thought it was cool that he could hold his pipe in his mouth and drive with both hands, because even then it seemed like a magic trick.

I was born with so many physical and mental comorbidities that balance has been an issue since I was a baby. I learned to walk very late. I am still not very good at it. So, as a kid, I was envious of people who could balance things, like a station wagon and a pipe. I felt similarly about my mom and dad with their drinks and food when they were driving.

But, the writing prompt is specifically about my biggest smell memory, which is smoke. I am starting with cherry tobacco or Presbyterian blend, and memories of my grandfather. I have to work up to talking about smoke slowly, because I need the comfort of my grandfather’s pipe smoke to talk about my first bout of PTSD.

There are certain things you don’t forget about a house fire, and the biggest is how the smoke smelled. How the air smelled. What the temperature was like on the ground. It is burned into you, mostly because you won’t get it out of your hair and skin until you shower, but you are lucky if it ever comes out of the clothes you wore standing there watching your house burn. I was 11 years old, and home alone.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of the smoke, and it registered quickly that this was not peaceful, tranquil, lazy smoke. This was not sitting the back seat of a cream-colored station wagon with a red interior. The smoke was sweet and I enjoyed it, but I never told anyone that because my grandmother didn’t like it when he smoked in the car.

It was the 80s, children. These were different times. I’m not even sure I was required to wear a seatbelt until I was six or seven with my grandparents, because by then my parents had drilled it into me. Of course it wouldn’t occur to my grandparents to tell me to put on a seatbelt. When their kids were young, I’m not sure their cars even had seatbelts.

So, I did the classic riding in the cargo area in my grandfather’s station wagon, or splaying myself into the crawlspace near the back window in sedans. My favorite thing was someone hitting the brakes, making me fall into the backseat with glee. I have also safely ridden in the back of a pickup truck many times, something I regret and yet don’t. I’m glad to have had the experience- it’s fun as hell. Yet, I can’t think of anything more dangerous. Back then, the research had not been done on just how dangerous it is.

And now I realize that I have come back up in topic, because I tend to dive into and back off of pain.

It was a Thursday, December 20th of 1990. Because it was so close to the holidays, we were having a district-wide dance.

Editor’s Note:

I will take a moment to explain that Methodist churches are known for having conferences, but there are smaller groups of churches called “districts,” which is particularly helpful for small churches because they can band together and pool their resources for things like teen dances, guest preachers, etc.

I’d met this boy, and if it was a different day, I’d remember his name. Names come in and out these days…. Anyway, I was at home getting ready for the dance. My mother put my hair in curlers (yes, she did) and had me put on my panty hose and heels (again, I agreed to this willingly) with a nightgown so that I wouldn’t mess up my dress when she was doing my makeup. I swear to you that when I was 14 I already looked 40, because I was a preacher’s kid and had to look the part. Makeup was a large part of my social masking, and it still is to a certain degree.

I can’t act like everyone else, but at least I can kind of look like them.

But my makeup wasn’t on yet- she had gone shopping with Lindsay. My dad was serving communion to shut-ins. It was five days before Christmas, and the smoke wasn’t friendly.

I had one moment of denial. Just one.

I sat there and kept watching “The Mickey Mouse Club,” “cause Fred and Mowava and the Mouseketeers say we’re gonna rock right here.” I thought, if I don’t get up and open the door to the hallway, then everything will stay fine.

It was not fine.

I finally realized that I needed to drag my ass up and see if anything was wrong. I am not lazy, I was preparing for meltdown and burnout, something I can only recognize in retrospect. It was like in cooking, taking three seconds to analyze a situation before you decide how to apply your attention. I get up the nerve to open the door to the hallway and it was already full of thick, black smoke.

I did what I do in every crisis. I instantly turned into my father and rose above. Someone needed to direct this situation until my parents got home, and it had to be me. There was no other option…. Even though by then I am social masking and overstimulated to the point of meltdown, screaming inside because no one is there to take care of me for the first time and it’s a big damn situation. I did not feel abandoned in the slightest. It was just reality. I’m the one here. They’re not.

All of these calculations happened in less than an instant, that was just my thought process…. Which now I realize is also an adult reaction, which proves to me that preacher’s kids, especially the oldest, grow up fast because they’re indoctrinated to help everyone else and eschew help themselves (why I am the worst parishioner in the entire world. I want to help the church because I have a solid background to be able to do that, and then I get overwhelmed and think, “what the fuck did I just do?” I am not helping. I am working because I play inside ball. I’ve known how things work in the church since I was born. That’s not a side most people get to see close up).

It’s funny what you realize, too, when your house is burning. There’s all these “Scruples” questions about what you would grab. I let it all burn. All of it. Not my fault. I was too terrified to take anything with me, although in retrospect I should have grabbed the clothes from the dryer because I was wearing so little and it was December. And in fact, the clothes in the dryer were the only ones that didn’t smell like smoke because of the cage.

I go next door to Doris Haggard’s (names go in and out- not that one) and said, very politely, I might add, “my house is on fire. Would it be okay with you if I used your phone to call the fire department?”

Are there differences between me at 46 and me at 11? Not as many as you would think.

Anyway, the fire department arrives and my preacher’s kid patois kicks in and I’m asking if they need any help or water or anything.

By this time, I should have been in a shock blanket, but again, social masking and overextended to within an inch of my life, so everyone loves me “exactly like I am.”

When my mother and sister came home, my mother was blind with fear and thought I was dead, when I was literally standing five feet from her. For me, death wasn’t a close call. All I saw was smoke and I got the fuck out.

I have talked about Lindsay’s trauma before, that one of the beams in the attic crashed onto Lindsay’s bed, and she heard a fireman say that if she’d been sleeping there, she would have died. It scrambled her brain in a bad way. Tall people don’t realize the impact of their words on the people they can’t see.

But I haven’t talked much about my own, because what got me through that initial bout of anxiety was taking control.

Just like when my mother died, I fell apart with depression and the smallest things became enormous tasks. I’ve always had ADHD and Autism, but the fire helped my neurodivergent brain along mightily. It makes my reflexes shorter and I’m quicker to anger, and I have a lot of work to do around that. But I don’t give up. I keep searching for the thing that will bring me peace.

Now that it’s been so long, I can at least enjoy cherry tobacco and Presbyterian blend again.