Behind Drawer Number Four

Behind Drawer Number Four

Noel Laflin

8-25-14

There is an old desk in our bedroom that should have been retired years ago.  But, as I have had it since my childhood - remembering the coloring, scribbling and typing that took place upon its well-worn surface - well, sentimentality always wins out. And thus this relic from my past has followed me wherever I’ve lived - which has been here in this home, for exactly half my life now.  

And, I am glad it has because each time a drawer is opened, a surprise to the olfactory receptors is just a sniff away. It’s a magical desk that can take me far away at the merest tug of an old wooden handle.

When the small top left drawer is pulled opened, for example, I am pleasantly overwhelmed by the smell of incense and a remembrance of the friend who gave it to me long ago. The petite cardboard box is still half-full of small, thick brown logs of “Chandan Dhoop – Highly recommended for all religious ceremonies and social function in Hindu temples, churches, musjids, agairies. Produces very good fragrance.”  The Mysore Sugandhi Dhoop Factory of old Bombay was not wrong in its description.  The fragrance is both heady and exotic.  The smell of sandalwood quickly permeates the room.  I leave the drawer open longer than necessary usually.  I might have been searching for an old magnifying glass or a replacement bulb for the bathroom night light – but, it’s the fragrance of a far off land that I have yet to visit that grabs my attention.  I like to open this drawer frequently.

As the very bottom drawer is the deepest, it holds the most items.  There are small hammers and screwdrivers, garden gloves, extension cords, spare parts for pond pumps and fountain fixtures.  When this heavy, wobbly drawer is opened, it wants to come off its old single wooden track.  But once it is carefully pried loose, scents of the garden – but 20 feet away – spring forth.  There is a united army of musk and mint – pond and bark all fighting to return through the open bedroom sliding glass door and be reunited with their comrades.  These earthy scents do not camouflage themselves very well.  And, they do not care.  They are the four elements, bursting forth to reclaim their small land.  It is a heady, powerful smell.

Move to the third drawer (the widest of them all) and you with encounter faint hints of sulfur, old brittle paper and, the cool refreshing scent of Arizona and Africa.

Books of matches snatched from favorite eateries and saved for three decades provide the senses with a distinct whiff of brimstone.  Hell fire is not part of the equation fortunately - just fond memories of a brother’s former restaurant or sizzling steaks eaten under two-hundred-year-old Trabuco oaks - or perhaps the gastronomically wonderful and seemingly endless buffet aboard a cruise ship bound for Mexico.

Notes from some of my mother’s memoirs remind me of vanilla and almonds.  The memory of her voice is brought back to life by the pleasant reminder of old writing tablets chemically altered to mimic her old spice cabinet.

The bag of small, smooth river stones brought back from the shores of both the Colorado and Zambezi Rivers recall the wet and dusty scent of petrichor, sage and crocodiles.  These last fragrances would be a stretch for anyone other than me.  But, when I open the plastic bag containing those stones so painstakingly selected over the course of thirty years, I merely close my eyes and the scents return, as if by magic – which it clearly is. 

The last drawer holds no secrets of lands either far nor near.  There is no hint of pond or river, croc or reed.  There is only the slightest memory of lemon polish and sixty-year old wood.  At times I swear the ghostly scents of crayons, number two pencils, thick rubber erasers and typing ribbons fight with one another to make themselves known.

I think the desk prefers to keep me anchored to childhood memories at times and thus reserves drawer number four all for itself.  That in itself is magical.