What is that Smell?

I was a frill sickly child when I went to live with my father and step-mother at the age of 7. I don't know that I'd ever owned a tooth brush until then and suffered from malnutrition. Many trips to doctors and dentists were only two of the many new things introduced to me during those first months at my new home in California.

Coming from Michigan to California would be a major adjustment for anyone but as a young child taken from everything and everyone she was familiar with it was almost unbearable. The houses were very different from what I was used to seeing, the trees were strange, and there were orange trees. Yes, I had seen oranges once in my life when my maternal grandfather visited my aunt's house in Michigan a few years before but to see them, tons of them, growing on trees struck me as amazing.

My new home outside of Los Angeles wasn't anything spectacular compared to others. I suppose it would have been considered an average ranch style with a garage and fenced back yard. There were a couple orange trees and a few palm trees in the yard. I also discovered snails - they intrigued me to no end, leaving their slimy trails across the concrete porch, moving slowly but seeming to always have a goal in mind.

The ocean was yet another highlight of California that I had never seen. I had never seen that much water in one place before in my life. Michigan has lots and lots of water, rivers, lakes, and rain but nothing to compare to the ocean. I just couldn't believe that there was so much water you couldn't see land on the other side. We visited the beach but there were so many people there I really didn't care for it much.

My father however loved the water and particularly the ocean. One weekend he and some friends of his went deep sea diving. I had no idea what that really meant at that time but he tried on his wet suit for us a few days before and all I could think was how very strange he looked with the black skin tight rubber stretched over his whole body, the face mask and air tanks fascinated me and the flippers on his feet made me laugh - they were so big.

Daddy and his friends left for their trip and I stayed at home with Mommy (my step-mother) and my baby half-sister. When Daddy returned home he brought me a gift that became my most prized possession - a huge shell from the ocean. It was so big I had to use two hands to hold it and Mommy showed me how I could hold it up to my ear and hear the ocean. I loved it, the sound of the ocean without all the people we had seen at the beach.

I carried that shell with me every place I went, when Mommy would let me, for weeks. In and out of the house the shell went with me. It sat on the porch with me watching the snails, it sat next to my bed when I slept. Eventually the shell ended up in the bottom of my closet though. It wasn't by accident. I put it there to keep it safe when I tired of carrying it around with me.

Then one day it happened that Mommy noticed a horrid smell coming from my room. I remember her spending the whole day cleaning the room, digging in drawers, under the bed and eventually the closet. I remember the face she made as she picked up my cherished shell. It made her sick to her stomach but at the same time I saw a sad look of concern.

The smell, horrid and sickening, was coming from my shell. It seems the animal whose home it had been in the ocean was still living the shell when Daddy brought it home to me. Out of water, isolated in the bottom of my closet the creature had died and proceeded to stink up my closet and bedroom. The concern on Mommy's face I had seen was the realization that my prized possession was going to have to leave the house. She knew it was going to break my heart but had no choice - she couldn't leave it there to continue smelling and eventually move through the whole house.

Looking back now I know all the trips to the doctors and dentists, the insisting I eat food I'd never seen or heard of before, the new cloths and all the other things she did for me were all things she did for me out of love but that day she had to remove my sea shell from the house was the day I really saw for myself this new mother in my life really did care about and love me.