Where the Garden Ends

Cigeratte Smoke & Fried Grease

I love the way my grandma smelled.

It was a mix of cigarette smoke and fried grease

melted into a knitted sweater.

It was a smell fused into the very fiber of her being,

soaked into her skin,

long since worked over in the summer sun.

But- perhaps I shouldn't say,

she smelled of cigarette smoke and fried grease.

Perhaps it would give the wrong impression.

People might not understand.

When I say,

she smelled of cigarette smoke and fried grease,

I mean she smelled of love and hard work and time well spent.

She smelled of a woman who'd fight for her country

and just wanted five minutes to breathe,

because damn!  She deserved it.

The type of woman who had her heart broken

and glued back together again.

A woman who raised three children

and seven grandchildren.

Who lived her life working in a kitchen,

providing,

for a family who just barely understood

what it meant to keep it together.

She smelled of a woman

who wasn't ever giving up.

So, when I say,

that she smelled of cigarette smoke and fried grease,

don't get the wrong idea.

I love the way my grandma smelled.

It was a mix

of love and hard work and time well spent.

I love how it soaked into me

and fused itself to my very soul.