Smoke

Good? Bad? Somewhere in between?

The Canadian wildfires made our Wisconsin air hazy and outside smelled like…family gatherings of my childhood.

Back then, everyone smoked. Every adult. Except my Mom and Dad. I wondered why my parents were weird and didn’t.

Mom had an ashtray on every end table in our house. After family gatherings it was my job to collect them and take them to Dad. Ashes, dead matches, stubbed out butts holding onto the lipstick of my aunts. Dad would gather it all into damp paper towels and place it in the garbage which he immediately took outside to a metal-lidded can in the garage.

My brother Luke right next to the ash tray as Gramma blows out her birthday candles.

Meanwhile Mom opened every door and window, even on Christmas Eve, searching, yearning for fresh air.

In school we made annual ash trays in art class to give our parents as Christmas gifts. Art class usually followed a grade-level lesson sponsored by the American Lung Association warning us of the dangers of smoking.

Because my parents didn’t smoke and were diligent about airing out the house, I grew to love the smell of cigarette smoke. If I opened the back door and sniffed I could tell who was visiting. Usually Gramma Helen. And if Gramma visited so did aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends. That meant Mom, the consummate hostess, like her mother and sisters, would have treats out:

a bowl of nuts

cheese and salami and Ritz crackers

Bridge Mix

grapes trailing down the side of a pedestal cake stand holding a bowl of shrimp salad

Dad’s molasses cookies.

Gramma, Uncle Tom and Aunt Karen. Notice the plates are clean and empty, but the ashtray and glasses are full.

Gramma lived in Green Bay. We would pick her up at the Greyhound Bus station in downtown Madison when she visited. She was given my pink bedroom, but I never cared because I loved having her stay. I would go to bed in my parents’ bed. When the party ended or my Dad got home from working second shift, he would move me to the couch where I’d wake to Gramma’s soft snore in the morning. The same snore I hear now when I visit my Mom in the nursing home.

In the evening Mom and Gramma would wash their hair and gab for hours in their robes. In our pajamas after our baths, Luke and I would listen and gobble up all the treats. The treats Mom saved for the adults, but the smokers only had appetites for ashtrays and cocktails.

When I was nine, Gramma ran out of cigarettes and Dad had already taken our one car to work. Mom wrote a note and Gramma gave me money. I walked past my elementary school to the little grocery store in the Lake Edge Shopping Center. I handed the note and the money to the tall man who was always there. He read the note, put a pack of cigarettes in a brown bag, handed me the change and I walked Gramma’s cigarettes home to her. He was the same nice man who had let me exchange a head of cabbage when I was sent there for lettuce.

Aunt Oddy’s kitchen where they lit their cigarettes on the gas stove. I never understood why all that hairspray never ignited.

That grocery store turned into a family restaurant where I waitressed in high school and college. I always preferred serving a smoking section to a non-smoking section. The non-smokers wanted substitutions, dressing on the side and decaf instead of regular coffee. Smokers? Making sure they had an ashtray and their coffee cup was full with whichever pot you were holding earned you a big tip without complaints or special requests.

My Dad is elderly. His rheumatoid arthritis is attacking his organs now that all his joints are painful and deformed. On the worst smoky day he had to go to the hospital to see his pulmonologist. I had to tell him no, we aren’t waiting for wheelchair transport outside. The air is thick with smoke and the doctor just said your lungs don’t sound great.

A week later I’m unable to visit him because he’s got pneumonia and I’ve lost my childhood fondness for the scent of smoke.