When I was a little girl growing up in the port city of Kotka, Finland in the mid 1970’s, I loved spending time talking to my mum in her bedroom after she came home from work. She would sit at her bright yellow dresser table, on this ruby red chair, and do her hair after she took a shower. I’d come in and talk to her, most likely showing her something that I'd done at school, and she'd listen attentively while applying this lemon hand cream, made of glycerin and lemon juice, on her hands.  

My mum worked full time as a sterile processing technician and a nursing assistant in the hospital, and had to wash her hands repeatedly all day long. So, to keep her hands from getting too chapped, she would use that lemon hand cream all the time. I remember that it was in an aluminum tube, and my mum always kept it in its small cardboard packaging too. She was a really orderly and neat person, so she always put the tube back in the package, and placed it in her dressing table drawer. Everything had its place.

My mum was a very friendly person, easy to get along with. She was very balanced and focused. She was the kind of person who, when you talked to her, would look at you and listen. She wasn't a particularly affectionate person, she wouldn’t hug you. That’s not how she expressed her love. But you could feel that caring from her. She took care of people: her family at home, and also the patients at work.  So, she really focused on the person she was talking to at any one time. And then she was also orderly, and a doer. She always focused on what she had to do. 

Sometimes when she was at work, I would sneak into her bedroom and take a little bit of the lemon hand cream because I was curious about that smell. I would take the smallest amount and always made sure to put the tube back into the package and into the drawer exactly as she had it, so she wouldn’t notice. I'm pretty sure she noticed that somebody had been there. But I thought I was sneaky.

I’d squeeze a little bit on my hands and just smell it. It smelled so wonderful. Unlike today, where lemon scents are used in cleaning products and all kinds of things, back then a lemon scent was a bit exotic. Lemons don't grow in Finland, they’re all imported. We have an association with the scent to cleanliness, and we know that it's antiseptic, but back then it was just this wonderful citrusy scent that you got from a hand cream. It was lovely.

What’s interesting is that recently, when I was going through my mum's belongings after she had passed away, I found a watercolor drawing that I had made around that age. I had drawn citrus trees around a Spanish looking villa. It was all about a kind of escapism; escaping to something luxurious and far away.

The scent is bright, sparkly, and really uplifting. A very energetic scent. And, like I said, for us it was somehow exotic. When I reflect on the smell, I realize it has all these qualities. It springs you into action, it's very straightforward, and so energizing. And it also helps you focus on the things that need to get done. That scent is my mum.

I know a lot of people say that lemon is just an antiseptic scent. But for me, because I have this association with my mum, this memory, I can really see the complexity. I can actually understand why somebody would like this scent because it gives you that focus and straightforwardness so you do the things that need to get done. That was my mum’s personality. She always said that we have to do what we have to do. It wasn't cold. It was caring.

Today when I think about the smell, it gives me that feeling of caring and cleanliness. And it reminds me of my mum. 

If the scent had a sound, what would it be? A canary bird singing.

If the scent had a color, what would it be? Dark yellow.

If the scent had a texture, what would it be? A cotton shirt.

If the scent could give you advice, what would it tell you? It would tell me to focus on the things that really matter, and to leave the noise of the world in the background. Also, keep your heart open, be cheerful, and do the things that you have to do.