There is only one Sunday morning a month that I'm not at a Ward Council meeting at 8:30am. I look at the men sitting in chairs all around the perimeter of the room and sometimes I think of their Mothers. How proud they would be to see their sons all spiffed up, some with hair still dampish looking, fresh shaven, scrubbed and tidy. White shirts, suits, neckties. sometimes shiny shoes but always nice shoes. Sunday shoes. Sunday clothes. Priesthood men. There is a scent of shampoo and soap. I've always been thankful that the room isn't in odor combat with powerful aftershave/cologne scents. It just smells fresh and clean. After several years of attending these meetings it's a very familiar scent. It's pleasant and feels rather homey to me in it's familiarity.
Two of my young granddaughters love my perfume. When they fly in for a visit I take my Chanel No.5 with me to the airport. Before I go into the waiting area, I give myself a neck misting because I know they will throw their arms around me and nestle into my neck and exclaim....Nana, you smell sooooooo GOOD!!.... That is a sweet memory, for them and also for me. When they were younger they called it "fumes". That seems very accurate!!
It used to be that we reinforced our favorite scents by adding, layer by layer, same-scent soaps, powder and creams or lotions (which are sometimes stronger than perfume it seems). We could identify each other by our perfumes and people would ask us what it was or recognize it and wish they could wear it but it just didn't smell good on them. I remember from my girlhood always having a blue bottle of dime store perfume called Evening in Paris. Our eau-de-toilette! I could also pick up a bottle at the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. My friends all loved it and we drenched ourselves in it. A couple of dollars bought a nice size bottle. Then I moved to White Shoulders Splash and then to Jungle Gardenia and then Chanel No.5 and on to several others, to give them a chance to be my scent choice but always returning to Chanel No.5
Recently I got this note................
Hi Nancy:
I've got to beg something.
The past three weeks, there is someone in our ward who has been using some kind of perfume that contains the one scent that I am allergic to. Subsequently, I have been absolutely miserable during Relief Society, with my eyes running, my nose running, and mucus clogging my throat. Yesterday was so bad that I could barely stay at church. The scent is also reaching me in sacrament meeting, and yesterday I had to leave the chapel, because I was so distressed.
There is nothing I can take to prevent the reaction, because my body can't tolerate the medicine to stop it.
So I am appealing to you to send out an email to the sisters in the Ward to please stop using perfume on Sunday. They can use it 6 days a week, but please refrain on Sunday.
If they keep using it, I just don't know what I'm going to do. I am truly miserable.
Thank you!
(and then she signed her name)
We have some in our Ward that have severe allergies and the day is past, of slathering on the lotions and potions and sprays of favored scents, when we go to Church gatherings. It pains me to think that my Chanel No.5 could smell like skunk spritz to someone else and cause them to miss Church!
I thought of a couple of scriptures.
One in Luke 6:31
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
and the other in Isaiah. These verses are talking about the women of the world getting caught up in all the latest things and thinking they are pretty marvelous. This will happen again in the last days as women lose sight of "proper priorities" and focus on themselves and their appearance- to the extreme. This scripture made me chuckle in light of the note I received.
Isaiah 3:24
And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink;.....
Monday. I'll be back. Hope you will too!
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