Rosie Posie
Do you remember your childhood?
I know some people don’t. My sister is one of them. Actually, more than one of my sisters can only remember pieces of ours, and I’m missing a pretty big chunk of mine too.
But I think even when we can’t remember the details, we remember the feelings.
There are little pieces of childhood that we carry somewhere inside of us. Sometimes I think we’re even afraid of losing them. Afraid that one day we won’t be able to remember the sound of something, or the smell of something, or exactly how it felt to be that small and that happy for just a moment.
I didn’t mean to make Rosie Posie today.
I was making a perfume for my daughter. Her fifteenth birthday is coming up, and I wanted to make something special for her. I wanted to capture childhood in a bottle—something she could wear that would make her body remember being young someday.
Instead, somehow, I found myself.
The moment I smelled it, I stopped.
It was like a door opening in my chest.
My childhood wasn’t all soft.
But this scent found one of the soft places.
I think I was twelve. Although I could have been eight. Memory is strange like that.
I remember myself small, with my long frizzy hair hanging down my back. A little floral dress with ruffles along the bottom and puffed sleeves. Dirty bare feet.
My dad had come home from work early that day with a surprise for me and my sisters.
A doll.
In my memory, she is the most beautiful doll I have ever seen.
For years, I have tried to figure out exactly which doll she was. Maybe she was Sweet Sue. Maybe she was one of the Tonka Cupcake dolls. And then there was my little Remco Mimi doll, who sang to me when my days were blue.
Somewhere along the way, my childhood brain seems to have woven those dolls together.
And honestly, I think I’m going to let her stay that way.
Because in my memory, my doll sings.
And she smells like roses.
I remember pulling open the heavy door and running through the porch. I push past the screen door, down the steps and around the side of our house. I run beneath the living room window and stop in my little corner of the backyard.
Just me and her.
I lift her to my face.
I close my eyes.
And I breathe in roses and sweetness and happiness, all captured in one little doll.
I press her belly to make her sing, and I sing along with her as though we are the only two people in the entire world.
And I remember what happened inside my body.
It was almost like buzzing. Like tiny vibrations moving through me.
Happiness.
It sounds like such a little thing now. A scented doll. A song. A barefoot girl standing beside her house.
But those were the little things that mattered to me.
And somehow, all these years later, my body still remembers them.
When I smelled Rosie Posie today, those memories didn’t slowly come back to me.
They crashed into me.
For a moment, I wasn’t remembering that little girl. I could feel her.
The same buzzing. The same warmth. That almost overwhelming rush of happiness that I can only describe as the feeling of oxytocin flooding through me.
And I realized that somehow, completely by accident, I had captured a piece of myself that wasn’t gone at all.
She had just been unreachable.
I think I have spent much of my adult life trying to find the child inside of me.
When you grow up in harsh conditions, I think part of that little girl can get trapped somewhere inside. Your body keeps growing. You become a woman. You build a life. You become a mother.
But she is still in there.
And maybe freeing her isn’t about becoming her again.
Maybe it is just about getting close enough to reach her.
To touch her.
To let her know that you finally made it back.
I’m emotional even writing that because today, for perhaps the first time in a very long time, I felt like I could touch her.
I can’t quite grasp her yet.
But she’s right there.
And there is so much comfort in that.
Your childhood isn’t mine. Your memories won’t smell exactly like mine. Maybe roses and vanilla won’t take you to a backyard beneath a living room window with dirty bare feet and a little doll pressed against your nose.
But I hope Rosie Posie makes your body remember something.
Something small.
Something soft.
A place. A person. A toy. A summer afternoon. A version of yourself you haven’t thought about in years.
Rosie Posie is part of my Memories Collection—my attempt to capture pieces of childhood in little bottles.
And maybe I won’t be able to capture one of your memories exactly.
But I hope I can get you close enough to reach her.
Close enough to touch her.
And maybe, for just a moment, bring her home.