I sat cross-legged on one of the red vinyl and chrome kitchen chairs, watching Mom at the kitchen counter vigorously kneading bread dough. Christmas was next week but I felt like I couldn’t stand the suspense until the big day! I knew better than to complain that time was passing too slowly. Mom’s answer to that was, “Stop wishing your life away!” I stared at the large red and black Stratford State Bank calendar hanging on the side of a cupboard. Some of my nine-year-old classmates at school talked about having their trees up already, but I knew our tree would not be put up until the afternoon of December 24^th.

I perked up when the back door slammed. A minute later my 20-year-old brother, Billy, stepped into the house. He was carrying a can of paint. He announced, “I’m going to give the entrance a fresh coat of paint.”

Mom questioned with surprise, “Does it really need a fresh coat of paint?

Grinning, Billy explained, “It could probably wait, but Christmas isn’t Christmas for me unless I can smell fresh paint.”

“How strange”, I thought, “What does paint have to do with Christmas?” I looked forward to things like listening to WDLB, the local radio station. Besides Christmas songs, during the weeks leading up to Christmas, they had a program every evening devoted to someone reading the letters to Santa that children mailed to them. Then, there was my family’s Christmas cookie decorating night, a tradition carried out each year within a week or two of Christmas.

The cookie night had taken place just last evening. When I came home from school yesterday afternoon, the house smelled of freshly baked cookies. Mom had filled a large roaster to overflowing with cut-out cookies. It took Mom, my sisters and I all evening to decorate them. My brothers even decorated a few when they came in from doing barn chores.

Remembering not only the cookies, but Sister Florence’s instructions on how to correctly use the words, “may and can”, I politely requested, “Mom, may I please have a Christmas cookie to eat?”

Glancing over her shoulder at me Mom protested, “No. They’re to be eaten during Christmas time.”

I quietly commented, “But there are so many cookies.”

Giving in good-naturedly, Mom relented, “Some of the Santa cookies had broken legs, and others didn’t turn out looking nice. Eat one of those.”

Three days before Christmas, Mom decided she wanted the living room and hallway floors polished before we put up our tree. She and my sisters moved furniture aside and scrubbed the gray living room tiles and the green hallway tiles until they glistened. Then Mom rubbed the polish on the floors. The clean smell of the floor polish and my eager expectations for Christmas excited me to a high level of energy. I couldn’t stop bouncing around with excitement.

 As the polish dried, the floors turned white, and I could see the swirling pattern showing how it had been applied. Disappointed, I exclaimed with dismay, “The floors looked nicer before you polished them!”

Handing me and my sisters clean rags from the rag box, Mom instructed, “Wipe away the white residue and burn off some of your excess energy. Then the floors will sparkle like you’ve never seen them sparkle!”

My sisters and I spent the next hour using our rags as sleds as we slid from one end of the room to the other. It was fun and we made a racket with our squeals and laughter. Mom was right. The floors began to sparkle.

Later that week when we put up the Christmas tree, the shiny floor reflected the tree lights as though it was a mirror. Two days after Christmas I celebrated my tenth birthday.

Our sense of smell, memories and emotions are tightly interconnected. Also, at the age of ten we are extremely impressionable and sensitive. No matter how many years pass, the smallest whiff of certain smells from those formative years will bring back powerful memories. For me, it’s the smell of certain floor polishes that trigger thoughts of Christmas.

Paint smells do not usually trigger an association with Christmas for most people. But I think I know the reason why they did it for my brother, Billy. The farmhouse I grew up in was built one year before I was born. My family moved into it two days after Christmas, which was soon after Billy celebrated his tenth birthday. His excitement in moving into a new, freshly painted house, and the thrill of Christmas became forever emotionally connected to each other.