I have a problem, I must admit it. Perhaps I should call a shrink, perhaps the police…you be the judge. My problem, you see, is this: I have of late found of my daughter’s head quite appealing. And before you say it: not in any aesthetic way,(although that may be considered, it may not be here!!!). I’m thinking more along the lines of haute cuisine. Or at least its alternatives on the higher plateaus of fine cuisine everywhere.
And yet I fear you have failed to understand me completely. I have never suggested that within the folds of her neck I smell sausages ( Claire…who knows who she is…once said this of that place, and with some reluctance, I must admit, she is right). Nor am I alluding to the frontal area, that place above the snot, but finely placed within the bop. No, not there either!
I am talking about an isolated area beyond the neck and in the upper regions, and yet not perceptible from the front, bar through the nostrils of a dog. In the parlance of the Jack and Jill-ian tradition, it is probably known as the crown; in my language of cooing and adoration it aligns itself with all things onomatopoeiac.
And yet with all the verbosity I have failed, with intention, to make myself clear.
You see, I smell curry…that’s right, quality curry – and I don’t mean a Saturday evening’s chips accompaniment half gawked up on the side of a road, a half-full carton still containing the pre-tasted fare looming chaste in the midst of all things otherwise- I smell the finest spices from the funkiest bazaar: I smell the routes to India, or from there, all things considered. I smell perfection…and it makes my stomach rumble, and what I fear is that I smell it coming from the crown of my own child.
As I hold her the scent of beauty rises, the risk of shame increases, and sometimes in my moment I feel less father and more cannibal. Some people talk almost high-faluting about the smell of new-born babes; me, I fear the truth in one-year-olds who have taken on the perverse scent of all that would be considered divine.
Now, before you ask: do I want to cannabilise my kid? Well,…do you have a good recipe?
©TheHairyTeacher2014
