a few of my favourite things

coppertone suntan lotion

Every now and then I will get a whiff of something and suddenly I am hurtled at light speed into my past where I relive a memory with perfect clarity. A certain brand of orange juice once tasted, brings me back to my grandmother's kitchen table on Dorval Island where I sat as a small child and drank orange juice with breakfast out of a small juice glass ringed with varying shades and widths of orange stripes. A good memory. Standing along the river or lake, the wind picks up and a soft breeze crosses my face at just the right angle and a scent that is both clean and earthy, water and soil in concert, and again I am 5 years old on the banks of the St. Lawrence River peering over the side of the dock with my Papa. A storm approaches, gray and menacing, electric and foreboding. Heavy and wet, a distinctive scent hangs in the air and we all know to run inside before the first lightning bolt strikes. That scent, a perfume to me, is exhilarating just as it was when I was a kid in Arizona watching the freakishly adrenaline-filled electrical storms from the safety of our porch. Mum was wisely inside while Dad and I braved it from the back yard. And then there is the liquor of summer which can be poured and now sprayed from a bottle of Coppertone suntan lotion. Only Coppertone is pure liquid summer, the solution that represents lapis-colored pools of water, no homework, unending days, beach towels, sand stuck to your bottom, incessant buzzing of insects and equally eternal laughter from children running through sprinklers. As I apply Coppertone, inhaling its whispers of fragrance, it is for me summer. If only they could bottle it right alongside Chanel no. 5...summer all year long...

(Thank you Bud, for supplying us with Target "Compares to Coppertone" suntan lotion spray...you have made me one happy girl!)