Peter

Coming down the stairs, I already know who stands at the bottom.

It's a nine year old boy with white-blond hair, big blue eyes, wearing a dark green sweatshirt. He's tensely crouched down, peering around the corner expectantly. I see a splash of color approximately similar to highlighter green, so I know he's holding a dart gun. I understand that I am walking straight into pitched battle.

I know who it is, crouching tensely at the bottom of the stairs, because I can smell him. It's not an unpleasant smell, exactly. Just not the smell you generally expect from a nine year old boy.

It smells something like chamomile body mist.

How the body mist entered our lives, I don't know. Someone probably gave it to Mom a long time ago. How the spray top broke, I also do not know. But it has been broken for a long time.

We packed and stored it, for reasons I, again, don't know. Probably because if you are any one of the majority in my family, you never throw anything away until it is definitely, wholly, completely, and forever useless.

I unpacked it a couple of weeks ago and it was set on the bathroom counter. It joined a haphazard assortment of shampoos, lotions, and body washes that I admit will probably never find their way to use in our not-so-hip lifestyle. That was when Peter first picked through the pile, looking for lotion.

He has always loved lotions. As a toddler, sharing my hand lotion was one of his greatest joys. Long before he could pronounce the words, he would proudly make the family round inviting everyone to smell his lotion.

"Maul my motion. Maul my motion." We used to exchange amused glances over his white-blond head, look into his big blue eyes, and...take a good sniff.

Anything that "mauled" good was his delight. It still is. When he found the chamomile body mist on the counter, he wanted to smell it. Sadly, though I never knew it before, it is difficult to smell the contents of a bottle very well if the spray top is broken off.

That was three or more weeks ago. The body mist, though still in plain sight on the counter, disappeared from my thoughts. Imagine my surprise when I learned today that though I had long forgotten, the nine-year old mind of my green-sweatshirted brother had not forsaken the hope of "mauling" the mist.

I was pulled rather unwillingly into the bathroom this morning.

"I fixed it," he announced, "I figured out how we can still use it."

Apparently, he joins the majority in our family. The majority that never wishes to label anything "useless." Smiling triumphantly, he turned the bottle upside down so that the perfume, compelled by gravity, dripped slowly out. Shall we, perhaps, rename it "body drip"?

I sniffed inquiringly on command. There's no question that it's a sweet smell, but it's not a scent I'll ever use. I left, ready to go back to my interrupted routine. A few minutes later, standing confidingly beside me at the front door, Peter, smelling now like a veritable perfumery, told me he had figured out how to take the lid off.

He also asked to keep the body mist. He wants to put it in his imaginary "clubhouse" outside. He doesn't know how he will use it; he only knows that it isn't definitely, wholly, completely, and forever useless.

Coming downstairs now, I see him in his green sweatshirt, tensely crouched, partially shielded behind a wall. I see the flash of highlighter green, the white-blond hair, yes, and the too-short khaki pants. I see him, ready to fight and conquer in the pitched battle at hand. And I smell chamomile.

I realize, in that moment, that he won't be nine forever. "Mauls" change to "smells" and someday, perhaps, scent will cease to delight him altogether.

But today....

Today, chamomile body drip in a broken bottle is a treasure to be hoarded in the imaginary clubhouse outside.

I wonder when I became too busy to thoroughly enjoy that special brand of pure, uninhibited pleasure found in the whiff of a sweet smell, and the thrill of crouching tensely behind a wall, confident in the power of a dart gun to put the world right....