Nothing but the smells!!

It was 1983…

I used to spend lot of time in my father’s lab. He was a very passionate remote controlled aircraft builder. That was not his job, so the only time he had for his passion was the time after dinner. So almost every day, after dinner i followed him down in the lab. At that time i was something in the middle between a baby and a teen ager and a place like that was almost a kind of scientific game laboratory.  To my eyes, a Smith miniplane, a Stearman, a Spitfire, were like colored angels hanged to the wall.

Long years spent between that beauties, and the grace of something that took the life between the hands of my father. Epoxy glues, varnish thinner, pure alcool, oils and fuels were appealing frangrances (at least for me) that every night made my nose full.

They say that the sense of smell is a primal sense. To me is a kind of one way time machine. The smell can take my mind back to the past very quickly and it makes my mind designing so clear memories.

Maybe that’s the reason why i love so much that kind of chemical smells…glues, oils, fuel, epoxy after more then 30 years they are still with me, in my nose, my tongue….my memories and my present.

Today in 2013 i stay in that same lab doing something different from a remote control aircraft, but it’s always something related with the term Fly, and the most interesting thing to me is that those chemical smells are still with me, in my everyday life. I actually have added a new one that took a nice place on that desidered smells list: the new entry is the smell of the bamboo heal treated.

Oh God! This morning I was flaming a new bamboo culm and my wife told me:

“hey can’t you feel that bad smell coming up from your lab?”

“what bad smell?!” i replied to her….then i quit answering to her and I took a long sniffing of the air and i say to my self: “wow…what a grace”

Why i have been silly for so long time?! Why i have believed for so long time to be a different and better person than you Dad?

Only now i understand we are so similar and that you have tracked my way; you have donated to me the gift of the passion and love for handcrafting and with it, the knowledge and the love of and for all those unbelievable fragrances.

Only now i can understand it. Only now that you’re not with me anymore.

Happy Father day Dad, keep watching my way from wathever place you are now.