My mother smoked every day of my life with her, inside and outside her womb. My senses remember:
When I was a baby,
I saw my mother’s face through a haze of cigarette smoke.
When I was a toddler,
I heard the click of a lighter more often than I heard the turning pages of a bedtime story.
When I was a kid,
I accidentally tasted my mother’s favorite brand when I drank the dregs out of a half-empty soda can that had been used as an ashtray.
When I was a teenager,
I became self-conscious and mortified when I discovered I smelled like the inside of my mother’s car.
As an adult,
I realized after she died that her hands touched thousands of cigarettes, but they rarely touched me.
