It’s known that the nose is our truest sense organ. As we inhale, scent molecules travel directly into the limbic centers of our brains, where we generate emotions and access core instincts.

I once had a lipstick, purchased in early summer in Madrid, on the swanky Calle Serrano (where, as a college student, I had no business shopping but I did anyway). It was bright pink, like a matador’s socks, and had a floral, make-up-y smell. Kind of like the Indonesian flower ylang-ylang and something slightly toxic.

To me, that lipstick smelled like that last summer in Spain, when I was 21 years old and operating on pure instinct. Me, in short skirts and little heeled shoes, riding the metro, dancing in clubs and flirting in cafés. I see myself in a black sweater, sitting on a barstool, blond hair reflected in the crowded bar’s mirrored wall. My bare legs emerge from a white and green polka-dotted skirt. Yeah, that’s me in my youth.

I kept that lipstick in the glove box of my car for years, ever so often taking a whiff, and remembering.

Fast forward to my 40’s and I’m in my Grandma’s tiny assisted-living apartment. Her simple two rooms almost bare, the patio so tiny, just a stub of concrete with a few sickly-looking potted plants. This for the woman who loved growing things: tending african violets, wild pansies and hens-and-chickens succulents. Almost at the end of the road.

I remember giving her a baby blue and fuschia pink Indian silk shift , then trying with great difficulty to help her into it. Arms didn’t move into sleeves like they used to. This was my first inclination of what advancing age could be like, when someone is unable to dress themselves and prefers instead to dispense with the whole charade. Which Gram did, eventually, spending her days beneath her covers in bed, blissfully naked.

That day, though, I’d been charged with bringing her to her 90^th birthday party.

“It’s your birthday Gramma, and we’re going to Mom’s house.”

“My birthday?! How old am I?”

“The big 9-0 Gramma!” And she shook her head in disbelief.

“How’d I get to be that old?” She asked, genuinely shocked.

I helped her get into her loose-fitting floral blouse and black slacks, hung her glasses around her neck on her freshwater pearl chain, and found her cardigan sweater. But the most important part was yet to come.

She stood in her small bathroom in front of the mirror, took a cherry-red lipstick off the shelf, and began applying it carefully to her lips.  The skin of her face was smooth and soft (she’d been religious about using night cream for decades), her eyes forget-me-not blue, her short hair snow white.

After proficiently completing this step, she turned to me and, with a sweet, slight smile, asked, “How do I look?”

“You look just beautiful Gramma. Now let’s go eat cake!”