My Nose Was Trying to Tell Me Something

When I was in college, I had a part-time campus job. I was the afternoon secretary for a Biology professor who was also director of a natural history museum on campus. I answered the phone, did some typing, and catalogued donations into the museum records.

The professor had a number of Biology graduate students who were in and out of his office during the afternoons. One of them had taken on some additional research responsibilities, and I saw him more often than the rest. He was a nice guy and had a just-as-nice young wife.

One afternoon, as he walked by my desk on his way in to conference with the professor, I suddenly had a warm, fuzzy feeling come over me. When he came back by, he stopped to hand me some papers that needed copying. I felt such a tenderness toward him, I just wanted to… well… go stand next to him and put my head on his shoulder. I felt both horrified and affectionate, alarmed and kind.

This happened all afternoon. I would be engrossed in typing, and he would walk by, and I would stop, and the word “Awwwwwww,” would run through my mind. Followed by the words, “What is WRONG with you?!?!?”

At 4:50, I straightened my desk, covered the typewriter, and made my way to the back workroom to sign out. I was leaving at just the same time as the graduate student. As we started up the stairs together, he reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a pipe. I stared at it, and said, “Ohhhhhh. You smell like my dad!”

He look perplexed and said, “What?”

“Did you just start smoking a pipe?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“And you’re smoking Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco, aren’t you?” I said.

“Yes,” he said, a little bit surprised.

“You smell like my dad,” I said. Then I tried to explain how I had felt so comforted and affectionate toward him all afternoon, and how I wanted to stand next to him and put my head on his shoulder, and I hadn’t understood it, but now I did. He smelled like my dad, also a pipe smoker who used Sir Walter Raleigh!

The longer I talked, the further away from me he edged, not quite understanding what I was trying to communicate.

He must have gone home and told his wife, who probably explained about women and their emotions, and that, No, I wasn’t coming on to him. He just reminded me of someone with whom I had an emotional tie.

I guess that’s what happened, because we continued to have a congenial relationship in our workplace in the afternoons, and he didn’t run anxiously away from me when next he saw me.

My dad put away his pipes when he had heart bypass surgery at 53 years old. If he missed it, he never said. Of course, I don’t want any young man in my life (or young lady, either, I suppose) to take up pipe-smoking just so I can have that same olfactory experience from my childhood. It’s neither a healthy choice nor a good idea.

Still, even today, many, many years after the scent of tobacco meant love, affection, and safety to me, I don’t think, “Oh, what a bad habit!” when I catch a whiff of Sir Walter Raleigh. I say to myself, “Awwwwww.”

 The hearing ear and the seeing eye—the Lord has made them both

Proverbs 20:12 (NRSV)

While noses aren’t mentioned in this verse, they are obviously given to us as part of the group of senses that help us learn and grow and be. Thank you, God, for all those ways you help me know about the world around me.

Note: I wrote this to submit to a denominational magazine. They have a theme list, and the theme for the month I was writing for was “Senses.” The deadline for submissions was September 1, and that’s the day I e-mailed this piece to the editor for his consideration. He’s bought things from me before and I was hopeful he’d want to purchase this one, too. I got a response a couple of hours later (and remember that September 1 was Labor Day, what a hard-working editor!). He said he liked the piece, but he just couldn’t use it, “because 99% of our Mennonite readers would not identify with the smell of a pipe, even though you are not promoting the smoking of a pipe.” I’d never even considered that.

The editor suggested that I try writing something else, based on other sensory experiences, and I could have until October 1 to submit it. So, this week I was able to work on that piece, since I already had this one, which a real editor said was “well-written.” And, I get to include pictures of my Dad.