“The airport smells like ammonia,” says Karen
as we sit and wait for our plane. It does. Sharp.
Stinging. She’s off to Minnesota, I’m off to New York,
and as we catch up about children and jobs,
I take a limbic trip to my childhood home, and I’m nine
and my hair is wrapped tight around thin,
pink plastic curlers. We’re in the upstairs
bathroom with little flowers in the wallpaper,
and my grandmother is squirting
something stinky and cold on my scalp,
dousing me in the terrible smell.
She tops me off with a white shower cap and
admonishes me to be patient. Though perhaps
I was still, I was not patient. Staring at myself
in the bathroom mirror, I wanted to be beautiful.
I wanted to be treated like a grown up. I wanted
to please my grandmother. After processing,
after neutralizing, after the curlers came out,
and after the final wash, I did not feel beautiful.
Or grown up. But I did feel, at least for that moment,
cared for by a woman who was seldom warm.
Almost fifty years later, I recognize the perm
for what it was, a four-hour hug. And there,
next to gate 3A, I smell it so strong, her love.