My friend and co-worker JC is a struggling smoker. The kind who really wants to quit, sometimes does for weeks at a time, but ends up smoking again for one reason or another. Several months ago, we established that I had no problem with her smoking while we drive together – my car or her car.
It was only yesterday that I realized why it doesn’t bother me at all, and I rather enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke.
I am not a cigarette smoker. I smoked when I was a kid, from around age 10 to about age 21 when I entered my first relationship. I was never truly addicted to smoking so quitting was a simple choice, strongly recommended by my partner at the time. My biggest struggle about not smoking was drinking coffee. I hadn’t realized that I drank coffee while I smoked, and for a short time I had to give up coffee too.
Both my older brothers smoke, one just once in a while, the other as a gripping habit still unchanged today.
My father did not smoke cigarettes as a habit, but I knew he’d smoked at some point in his life and I always encouraged him to smoke a pipe because I loved the smell of his tobacco. Many of my “daughter” Christmas presents to him were pipes, pipe holders, lighters and the like to support this behavior, but he never stayed with it.
I remember as a child when the whole family ate meals together, we sat at a bar between our kitchen and dining room. My father and two brothers sat across the dining room side of the bar. I sat at the end and my mother sat on the inside, the kitchen side. I have a strong memory of an after meal ritual – I’d finish eating and go sit on my mother's lap. She’d eat her last bites of food holding me, then, after she finished eating, she’d light up a cigarette. She smoked it while I sat in her lap. Sometimes, at breakfast I suppose, she’d have a cup of coffee too.
Cigarettes and coffee are the scent of my mother - of nurturing safety.
And now that we're feeling all warm and fuzzy about the smell of cigarettes, this is where I’ll mention that both my parents died from lung cancer. I can’t talk about smoking without that bit of information.
