La Collection Revisited or My Dad's House

by Marlen Harrison, 27 January 2006

Sometime during the first week of April, 2006, I will return to the United States and leave behind the Land of the Rising Sun. This is not an easy thing to do: I have lived here for nearly 4 years and to be blunt about it, the experience has in many ways saved my life. It’s been an interesting journey, as hopefully all journeys will be, and it’s funny to think back to the beginning, my first 6 months living here: I did absolutely no swapping or selling of fragrances during that time. However, since then…I’ve lost all constraint. So how exactly does one go about relocating a fragrance collection that would make Ms. Marcos drool with appreciation?

Easy – you have your family turn their home into a warehouse and slowly swap away all your fragrances, having the new items sent to the land of relocation. It works something like this:

My friend Deb wants something from my list or vice versa. I send her the item from Japan, she sends her item to my Dad’s house.

Or…I see something on eBay that I simply must have, though chances are I have no idea what the hell it actually is, and I bid on it, snipe it, and have it sent to my Dad’s house.

Or…my odious, cruel, evil friends at Basenotes tell me about a sale at Beautyhabit which of course prompts me to find something I don’t need, purchase it, and have it sent to my Dad’s house.

A word about my Dad’s house: Dad lives in Florida. He tells me one day while chatting on the phone, “I’m putting the packages out in the garage on a shelf.” I gasp with shock and explain, “Ummm, you can’t do that because the heat will kill them.” “The garage is air conditioned,” he chuckles. “Ok, but a shelf is near the ceiling and everyone knows that hot air rises, which means that it might be best to just keep them in the closet on the floor in the guest room,” I plea.

Dad sends weekly email updates that look something like this:

GOT 5 NEW PACKAGES TODAY. WILL START CONSTRUCTION ON THE INDUSTRIAL COOLER YOU’VE ASKED TO HAVE INSTALLED IN THE GARAGE ON MONDAY.

LOVE,
DAD

A week later I get a phone call from my Dad’s wife, “Your father threw his back out today moving one of your packages.”

My friend Deb sends the following message, “Ok, you can have my Keiko Mecheri’s and I’ll ship them to your Dad’s house, but just one question – when you get home, what’s the first thing you are gonna do? Kiss Dad? Unpack? Or start to open your packages?”

A word about these packages: Though I live in Japan, I try to get back to the states once a year and usually I stay at my Dad’s house. In the past I’ve arrived around midnight, let myself in, gone to the guest room, opened the guest room closet and found cardboard boxes of various origin and size piled about half way up the wall. I pour myself a drink, turn on the television and dig into what has become my new “Xmas comes everyday” routine and open the packages. After about an hour, jetlagged beyond all recognition, I’ve gotten buzzed from my drink and high from sniffing the 307 perfumes now scattered around me and pass out. I wake up the next morning in a mess that looks as if a bomb had exploded and am told that the cleaning lady will be arriving in 10 minutes, which of course is Jewish for “we have to clean the house before the cleaning lady gets here.”

Recently, Dad and his family have told me that they are going to sell their house to Nordstroms to make a special annex for the fragrance department. I’m not sure they were joking. If they weren’t, I just so happen to have a set of plans right here…

About the author

Marlen Harrison is the creator and editor of PerfumeCritic.com. As well as a column for Basenotes.net, Marlen's other writing has included regular contributions to NowSmellThis blog, BeautyAddictMag, and The Washington Blade.

All articles by Marlen Harrison

Categories: , Addicted: The ramblings of a Fragrance Junkie

La Collection Revisited or My Dad's House

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