Rolling Smokes

I remember the smell of dried tobacco. I love that smell. On the rare occasion I am at a party and someone is opening a new packet of cigarettes I always recognize the familiar aroma of dried tobacco filling the air with its presence. There is something sweet in the smell of that darkened, dried brown-leafed, sticky, cancer causing vegetation. It fills my nostrils with nostalgia.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is sitting at the kitchen table. On one side of me sat a pile of empty cigarette papers and on the other, that earthy, sweet smelling tobacco. The task was not difficult to comprehend but did require an acute level of dexterity. My small hands knew just how to hold the paper tubes so the tobacco would find it's way in with one slide of the cigarette maker machine. I can still recall that sound. Whoosh-click. Whoosh-click. Two more cigarettes finished. My sister and I would sit there at that table for an hour making cigarettes.

I'm not sure what saddens me more remembering those moments - the fact that my parents had me manufacture cigarettes for their enjoyment or that I didn't recognize a problem with the situation. It just was. I was a kid. I said I was bored. My parents offered a solution. I rolled smokes and thought nothing of it.

My dad smoked two packs of cigarettes every day. He still does. Mom is not far behind in her consumption. I wonder with every passing year when they will be stricken with some form of incurable malignancy. I wonder but I don't fear. I feel that I should be regretful of the fact that we are estranged and they could be stricken and dead and I will still have unresolved business. I fear for the fact that I honestly feel nothing.

I detest smoking. Its expense, its process, its monies given to lobby government, its filth, its abundance and its acceptance. It represents money lost and kids who often go without a meal while their parents smoke their precious lives away feeding their addiction and not their children. The only thing sweet about it is it's smell before it is set afire and set into action. Actions that disease people and families and populations and health care systems. I still smell it now. Its sweet aroma is an oxymoron to everything it represents. But I can still smell it. It lingers like a fog in my mind.