Bleach

Sadly I didn’t have the best relationship with my grandparents on either side. My maternal grandfather passed away when I was pretty young. I honestly can’t recall if I even met him. The other grandparents were weird to me and I remember as a child that I didn’t really like them. They were just there.


But what I do remember about my paternal grandmother is that she was a clean freak. Her house was spotless…it was really cleaner than spotless. I don’t want to say immaculate because that’s too cliché. The place smelled of newness and shined all over – almost like a diamond. It was that brilliant.

Not only was it the most impressively clean place ever, but my grandma smelled of bleach. There were times when she would tell my mom she was coming for a visit and I would freak out. I couldn’t stand the smell of her. She was so pungent and vomit producing in her bleach noxious aroma that I would pretend to be asleep to avoid having to hug or kiss her. When I had to say hello, her smell wore off on my skin and my clothes. I wouldn’t be able to get the scent off of me without taking a shower or bath and cleaning my clothes.

When I lived in France one of the first things I did was go to the grocery story. I decided to pick up some food staples and cleaning supplies so that I could do my share of cooking and cleaning in the apartment that I rented (I rented a big room from an older businesswoman). At the supermarket I picked up the French equivalent of an Italian word/product that I recalled my mom mentioning often when it came to cleaning. I felt proud of myself because I had now learned a new French word by way of my Italian that I could add to my dictionary.
When I got home and opened the product to clean the bathroom, the smell singed my nose hairs and made me want to retch. It was bleach. The same horrible, tear producing fumes that I associated with my grandmother were now in my super cool French bathroom! Ugh! Cough! Cough! Choke!

To this day I have issues with bleach. The other day my mom asked me for some to clean my floors and I told her she would have to ask my husband because I hate using bleach. When I was pregnant, the smell of bleach was one of the few things I could not tolerate (cigarette smoke being the other) without almost puking. Any memory of my grandmother is forever tinged in the smell of stinky sanitizing fluid.

What I pray for is that my daughter doesn’t have any similar pejorative memories of her grandparents like I did. Even if some of the things they do annoy me, I hope that they don’t forever plague her like the odor of bleach has done for me my whole life.