What’s A Happy Sense-Memory of Dad?

Father’s Day

STORY: The Hardware Store of My Childhood

Several years ago, we were on a family vacation on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. There was a long wait at a local restaurant. Frustrated and hungry, we left our name and wandered into a nearby hardware store to help pass the time. Upon entering, I felt a wave of wonder and anticipation. Suddenly, my eyes flooded with tears.

My children asked, "What’s wrong, Mommy? What happened?"

I choked out the meaningless words, "childhood hardware store smell."

They probably thought it was low blood sugar or that I’d been out in the sun too long, when my husband came bounding up from the back of the store excitedly yelling, "This hardware store smell is unbelievable! It takes me right back to being a kid in Philadelphia."

I grew up in Miami, Florida, so we certainly didn't frequent the same stores, yet the scent triggered intense feelings, and then memories, for each of us. I’m sure there wasn't “Essence of Childhood Hardware Store” in a room deodorizer. The original smell was undoubtedly a combination of pesticides, mold and other deadly, toxic chemicals crammed into a small and, often, too-hot, space.

Why, for me, did that also bring tears? I realized that, in that instant, I had returned to the hardware store of my childhood with my Dad. He had died a number of years ago, when I was only twenty-two, but I had been transported by that smell to the age of four, to a place that smelled the same, and in which they knew my Daddy by name.

I had felt the stiffness of my brand new jeans; first-time jeans for a tiny girl’s premiere trip to the hardware store. I’d only worn and loved girly dresses until that day. My rite of passage meant that, not only was I old enough to go there with Daddy, as each of my older siblings had, but that my parents were sure that I, unlike my sister, wouldn't eat any nails if no one were looking.

The smell of the sweat of hard labor had been in the crease of my Daddy's elbow. I had held his arm tightly, poking, pressing and releasing the vein on the back of his strong hand with my finger, to stop and release his blood flow.

Although I didn't have the words to express it, I believe that the hardware store held the possibility of creation for my Daddy, in the same way that a blank sheet of forty-pound weight watercolor paper and paints hold that for me today. I could smell the power of that.

Daddy bought charcoal for the barbeque grill there and I could inhale the whole experience of Sundays with my family; the going to the beach, coming home, washing the gritty sand away in a tub of Mr. Bubble, Daddy standing on the freshly-mowed grass grilling my favorite hotdogs, with roasted marshmallows for dessert (only if I finished my meal).

He got the gasoline for our mower at the hardware store of my childhood, too. The wet tears on my face were my unconscious testimony to missing him.

They were also the vehicle for the lesson in altering perceptions, the next time there’s a long wait at a restaurant.