Scents My Sister Loved
Essays By Mark David Boberick

“Just buy it, you’ve earned it!” were the final words out of my mouth before my sister swiped her credit card.  It was the summer of 2003 and my sister Dawn and I were passing the time in New York City between a matinee and an evening show on Broadway. We were on Madison Avenue in the old Creed Boutique near Barneys. Just a month earlier, we had both celebrated graduations: I, from high school, and Dawn, from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy where she had received her Doctorate of Pharmacy. 

Earlier that day, while we were shopping before the matinee, Dawn and I happened
into Sak's Fifth Avenue where she was greeted by the Creed sales associate who sprayed her down with Silver Mountain Water.  We were already late for the show and so we made haste, ran across town and quickly took our seats.  All through the first act,
I could see her wrist to her nose, transfixed.
"A Slight Intake of Breath" by KC Wilkerson
We had a winner.  By intermission, she professed that she was haplessly in love
with “that scent in the white bottle.” By curtain call, she was determined to own it. 
Off we walked (very briskly, might I add) to the Creed boutique.

My sister was not an over-indulgent person. Where I made a list of the Gucci sandals
I needed to own by the end of the summer, Dawn was more than happy buying her
shoes from the Bass outlet. So, she naturally hesitated at the price for a bottle of Creed.

“You can afford it now,” I said. The days of student living were over. I knew I had just witnessed
the moment where a regular person takes a giant step towards becoming hopelessly devoted
to the perfume bottle, like her brother.  I also knew that if she didn’t buy that bottle, I’d hear
about it for the entire 3-hour car ride home to Pennsylvania.  For the sake of us both, she
needed to swipe that credit card. And swipe she did.

Dawn wore Silver Mountain Water till the day she died. She got stopped everywhere we went by people who simply had to know what scent she was wearing. I, on the other hand, who had already amassed enough perfume to last several lifetimes, never got stopped. (And I still don’t.) I’ll admit it – I was jealous. She left an exquisite trail of scent whenever she walked into a room. The things she brought out in that perfume are secrets now known only to the heavens.

“Smell this,” I said giving my sister absolutely no chance of protest as I shoved the strip in front of her nose. 
“What does this smell like to you?”

She sniffed. For a while.

“It smells like those white flowers that used to grow behind the shed,” she answered.

I stood stunned. Dawn and I had never once discussed those flowers and never once did we even play in that area of our backyard together. By the time I was old enough to splash around in puddles; Dawn was already in High School.

It never occurred to me that my sister might once have paraded through the rainwater in that very same area in her youth, but I guess she did. And I guess those white flowers, which I now know as Narcissus, were just as intoxicating and breathtaking to her as they were years later to me.

We bought the Amazone and went to lunch.

As I go through this life attuned to scent, I am continually awed by the power of our sense of smell, our most evocative of all the senses. We can be instantly transported to an exact time and place that we haven’t thought of for 20 years. Walk past a woman wearing Shalimar or Miss Dior and a wave of emotional memories come flooding back. It never fails.

Every Spring, when I go back home for a weekend, I take a walk over to the area where I spent many a day soaking wet with rubber boots filled with water and I wonder if this year, those flowers will come back but I know they never will.  The area is grown over now, the boulder long removed and the rain seems to be diverted elsewhere these days as it runs down off the mountain. But I imagine my sister playing there as a child. I imagine her doing exactly the same things I did.

I remember the scent of Narcissus.

I wear Amazone.

And I smile. 




We called it “The Vacation from Hell” and we knew we were being overly polite. “The Magic Kingdom loses its magic when you’re sick in the tram line,” Dawn said. And she was right. It was the fall of 2005 and my entire family was on vacation in Walt Disney World Florida. And while a cool spell was moving through Central Florida, a 24-hour virus was moving through the Boberick family.  Each one of us, on a different day - just our luck.  Dawn was the first to notice a stirring in the stomach, and I was next followed by the rest of the family in tow. But, by the end of the trip, we had all of our faculties about us and were able to enjoy the remaining days. On our very last day, we went to EPCOT because we simply adored it. Straight to the French Pavilion I went – to Guerlain. Dawn followed.  While I was in Guerlain, Dawn was busy browsing the Perfume store right next door. By the time I arrived to join her, I could see she had that look that I knew all too well. She was transfixed again. She found another one.

Of all the scents in that store, my sister had honed in on a bottle of Cabaret by Parfums Gres, newly released but with very little fanfare. It was on the end of the very top shelf, next to the wall in the corner.  Dawn had bypassed the Diors, the Chanels and the Givenchy’s – each, with their own displays that you could hardly ignore.  She bought Cabaret without hesitation and wore it in rotation with Silver Mountain Water, even discovering that layered together, they were even more intoxicating to her than when worn separately.  Worn singularly, Cabaret was an unusual, persistent rose, classic, refined, and elegant. When worn by Dawn, it was all of those things, but with a touch of her easy-going spirit thrown into the mix. It was a perfect match for her.

Dawn wore other scents. She fell in love with Estee Lauder Beautiful back in high school and like Sharon Stone before her, reached for my bottle of Creed’s Green Irish Tweed quite often. She once asked me if I had any sandalwood fragrances because she wanted to start wearing them. “I think I’m ready to go through my Sandalwood Period, now,” she said, dramatically, as if she were Norma Desmond. 

Dawn was dryly humorous like that – a trait she got from her younger brother, I think.  Out of my room I trudged with bottles of Creed Santal Imperial, Keiko Mecheri’s Bois de Santal, and ETRO Sandalo, all of which she enjoyed, but the Sandalwood Period didn’t last as long as she thought it would - but God love her, she tried.

As I write this, nearly 2 years after her death, I am wearing her favorite combination of Silver Mountain Water and Cabaret.  I wear them often, from her bottles.  Sometimes alone, sometimes layered. 

I wear them when I want to feel close to her or when I wish she were by my side. I wear them when I get mad at her or when I want her strength.  I wear them when I need to feel lucky, hoping they’ll be my extra insurance policy.
I reach for them when I’m scared.  I wear them on her Birthday. 

And sometimes I go months without reaching for them at all - the healing process of grief, I suppose.

For those of us who have a special fondness for the sense of smell, connecting to those we love through their favorite perfumes is one of the best ways to find comfort.  Smell is our most evocative sense, and if you’re reading this, probably your most treasured, as well. Among all of the memories I have of my sister, the ones involving the scents my sister wore are some of my favorite. They are a way of associating someone I love to something I love, something that is very much a part of me.

At my family home in the Pocono region of Northeastern Pennsylvania, our backyard has a shed in the far corner of it. Along the side of this shed, and also running behind it was this little stream created by water as it came down off the mountain during the rainy season in the spring.  This water would pool up before seeping down into the ground and along the edge of this pool grew beautiful wildflowers and berries.  A landscaping boulder turned into an island several times a year.

As a kid, I would put on my rubber boots and jump through the calf-deep water.  I made ships out of leaves with little twig masts and launched them from the island, entire fleets of them.  For one week out of the year, these intoxicating, fragrant white flowers erupted from the earth and blossomed in all of their glory.  I could not get enough of them.  I’d smell them for hours before finally sacrificing them – ripping them out of the ground and going in and handing them to my mother with a giant smile on my face. I was 5 or 6.  The next year – the flowers never came back.

Getting Dawn into Hermès was not an easy task, but I insisted she come in with me because I wanted to smell more perfume.  It was a request she was used to by now.  At first, she was more of an observer than a participant but soon she rolled up her sleeves and started grabbing bottle after bottle.

I owned most of the scents by this time, but there were a few that I never really paid much attention to.  On this particular day, one of those fragrances was the sparkling Amazone.  I lifted the blotter card to my nose after spraying it liberally and when I did, I had an instant scent memory.

Suddenly, I remembered splashing through puddles in the rain and sitting on my own private rock of Gibraltar in the middle of my rainwater-made Mediterranean Sea.  And I remembered the flowers.

Angel image "A Slight Intake of Breath" by KC Wilkerson.  
Bottle image courtesy of House of Creed and Adam Brecht from International Cosmetics & Perfumes, Inc. Narcissus White Lion Stock Photography by Janet Davis. Other miscellaneous images supplied by Editor.
Published in Sniffapalooza Magazine.com: October 1, 2009
Also re-published in Sniffapalooza Magazine, October 15 – November issue, 2009

MARK DAVID BOBERICK - "MD" (Editor of The State Of Perfumery.com) is an Interior Designer and self-proclaimed Perfume Enthusiast who has been in love with scent for as long as he can remember and has been collecting fragrances since the age of 12. Mark has written extensively on perfume, especially for Sniffapalooza Magazine and has been published in Men's Health Australia. In 2009, MD conducted the first of what has become an in-demand workshop entitled "The Poetry of Perfume" in which he familiarizes his guests with perfume history and composition, and introduces them to many different perfumes from the classics to the niche and obscure. A lover of art and music, MD frequents museums, theatre, and the opera. He is the first person in over 10 years to interview global fragrance expert and author, Fragrances of the World, Michael Edwards. View full interview here. 

He is also an accomplished theatrical set designer having already amassed a large portfolio of work for only being 25 years old. MD is an avid supporter of Nationwide Greyhound Rescue programs and adopted his 8-year old retired racer in 2009. MD currently resides in Cape May County, NJ.

This is Mark David Boberick's first Top Five Finalist nomination for Editorial Excellence in Fragrance Coverage 2009 Blog for Sniffapalooza Magazine.com
All rights reserved 2006-2010.  All content belongs to Sniffapalooza Magazine.  All articles by individual writers and contributors, understand and agree that each article that is accepted by the Editor for publication;
becomes the property of Sniffapalooza Magazine for the sole purpose of publication for Sniffapalooza Magazine. Articles may be archived for permanent use on the web site for Sniffapalooza Magazine and for future issues. 
All articles remain the property of Sniffapalooza Magazine for display purposes only.

Sniffapalooza Magazine is independently owned and operated by Raphaella Barkley.

FiFi Finalists logo courtesy of the Fragrance Foundation.

The Fragrance Foundation and The 2010 Fifi Awards announced April 23, 2010 - the Top Five finalists in the category of Editorial Excellence in Fragrance Coverage 2009 Blog.  Sniffapalooza Magazine garnered TWO nominations again in the TOP FIVE finalists in the category of Editorial Excellence in Fragrance Coverage 2010 Blog.

See the two of the top five articles here in their entirety.  Congratulations to Mark David Boberick for his article "Scents My Sister Loved" featured here and Michael Davis for "Real Men Wear" linked here.

The Editorial Excellence in Fragrance Coverage Blog category is an historic and appreciative gesture on the part of The Fragrance Foundation for the quality work on online fragrance blog sites, legitimizing them as editorial vehicles.
This is truly a great honor for us. 

Sniffapalooza Magazine also placed two articles in the Top five last year, making Sniffapalooza Magazine a four time Top Five Finalist for Editorial Excellence in Fragrance Coverage Blog.   

Congratulations to the two contributors who placed Sniffapalooza Magazine.com on the map again!
A sincere heartfelt thanks to the Fragrance Foundation and FiFi Awards. The Five Finalists and Winner should be
up by this weekend on the FiFi blog.