Smoke Rising

Everything about me smelled like smoke: my hair, my clothes, even my skin.

My parents both smoked, alot, like a pack or two a day, though I know for my dad half of every cigarette burned up in an ashtray while he cut someone's hair or gave them a shave. When I was a kid, I have to believe teachers and anybody within smelling distance, had to believe I, too, smoked, as I smelled like I had just crawled out of a smoke stack, which I pretty much had. 

My parents smoked everywhere; in our house, in bed, in their car with kids in it or not, in Dad's barbershop, in our garage where he played cards with his buddies, when he played golf on Sundays and Wednesdays, when Mom hung out with her neighborhood girlfriends drinking coffee in their kitchens and on their back porches, when corralling us kids, when she was reading her books and magazines and listening to her jazz records and pruning her roses. So, naturally, everything about me smelled like cigarette smoke -- my hair, my clothes, even my skin and school books. The only person I remember who smoked more than my folks was my best friend Tim's mom Martha. That lady smoked like a smudge pot! Pungent white smoke constantly rising from between her finger tips and escaping from between her lips. But we loved her so much! She drove us to junior high in the bitter winter, freezing cold in her little Mercury Cougar convertible, top and windows up, frigid Midwestern early morning winter air seeping in from everywhere, Martha driving in her bathrobe with a ciggie hanging forever from her lips, the tip bouncing up and down, unconsciously knocking off her enlongated ash, as she scolded me and Tim for whatever we had most recently done that we knew better than to do and all we could do was shiver and watch the thin fog of our frozen breath mingle with Martha's cigarette smoke. I hated that smoke and the fact that my folks and Martha smoked so much, but now when I get a whiff of that familiar smell of cigarette smoke, I smile and think fondly of Mom and Dad and Martha and my mom's Tareytons, my dad's Marlboros, and Martha's Pall Malls and feel lucky I never smoked but just as lucky that something as simple as the smell of a little cigarette smoke triggers such strong memories of people I loved so much.