coming home

When the key turns in the lock, I know I can expect three things. First, in order get to the door beyond the path, one has to navigate world, that unruly, smelly, frightening outside. Rude bus drivers, bad-tempered children, condescending parents and incompetent colleagues, and that’s just the people. What of the rubbish and meanness and despair and hostility and bleakness?

So, first, there is the overwhelming relief when the key scrapes into the silver lock. Once the key is forced, stiffly, to just the right angle, the door swings open and hot burnt-cinnamon laced air is sucked inside. I close it hurriedly without shutting out Six.

That’s the second. Six will run to the door, her fat belly swaying underneath with each paw brought forward and her tail straight up in the air. Hungry again, fat cat. The dark lines around her eyes inquire. Once the door is safely closed and fur is weaving about my ankles, the hot air disperses and the cool smell of home soaks into me.

That is the third, and my favorite. There is nothing like the smell of your own home, and each house is different. There isn’t a sharp smell, like I imagine an artists’ house to have a tang of turpentine, or a taxidermists a flavor of formaldehyde. I don’t live near the sea, so there’s no scent of salt water, nor the dirt and vegemite smell of children. The smell of my house is subtle and mixed, like the soft dent in the couch filled with different color cat hair, or the grill that still holds the remnants of grilled cheese.
Some days someone in the bakery across the street doesn’t wash the trays properly before biscuit shapes are laid across them and submit to the huge ovens, and the blackened crispy smells drift and invade the street. Sometimes the greenie neighbours fertilize their garden with squished fish water and cow poo, and that seeps through the fence.

Most of the time though, when I lean against the cool wall inside the door, the smells that greet me are dust, bricks, lavender washing powder and mangoes.