A La Recherche du Temps Perdu

This morning was a good one. I had errands to run for work and thus was out of the office until noon. The first store I needed to hit didn’t open until 10, so I got to have a lazy morning and even had time to drop off my dry cleaning (when I’ll have enough extra cash to pick it up is another story, but I digress). So, out and about was I. Canal Rubber (yes, I had to go to the rubber store for work. Quit laughing) for cording, Bloomingdale’s SoHo for soaps and lotion (ha ha, rubbers and lotion, get your mind out of the gutter), and finally Bed, Bath, and Beyond for guest towels (yup, rubbers, lotion and guest towels. ALL for legitimate purposes, I swear).

Anyway, at Bloomingdale’s I sampled the various lotions and potions and sprays. Some Jo Malone here, a little Molton Brown there topped off with bit of La Mer.

Off I go, traipsing along Broadway to the uptown F train. All of a sudden I’m hit with a whiff. A scent. A memory. I know what it is, but I can’t place it And then it hit me. Somehow, someway the lotions and potions combined with my own special Ryanness to produce the exact scent of CHOP. Specifically floor 7 East. So yes, today I am wandering around smelling exactly like the pediatric oncology ward at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. And I kind of like it. No, I do like it. I’m nostalgic. That’s where I spent my freshman year of high school. And now, some 14 years later (shit, that long ago?), I don’t remember the pain and fear I remember the fun and the good times. From the sublime to the ridiculous I suppose.

I read recently that “the measure of how you [hold] up in the face of a life-threatening illness [is] not how much you changed but how much you stayed the same, in control of your own identity.” I agree. It did not change me, it solidified me. Cancer took my good qualities and made them better. Those same qualities which branded me as an outcast in school and amongst my peers were the ones that best enabled me to survive and are now those which allow me to thrive.

You can keep your Madeleines. Give me the feint antiseptic smell of 7E any day.