It was the fluid that was used to embalm bodies back in the day. I’ll never forget the smell. It clung to my husband’s clothes, it emanated from his lungs when he breathed. It was strong, not garlic strong, but more metallic, cold, citrus, and floral at the same time like you took a room full of flowers and sliced it with steel through and through. It had a sickly sweet edge that was cold, icy cold as if ice had a smell. This vapor doesn’t settle, it hangs in the air, it’s heavy and cloying, but still so light it permeates anything porous and receptive, doors can’t shut it out, nothing can.

It was a smell that was part of my life after I married the undertaker. And it was this smell that informed me I was pregnant. Veritably days after conception, the edgy smell of frigid fluid sent me flying into the bathroom. No tests from the drugstore in those days. I didn’t need them. I became so sensitive to my little friend FF, that when Ken my husband stepped out of the elevator, down the hall, I was already projectile vomiting toward the bathroom. That’s how I knew he was home.

Welcome home honey.
Life is beautiful.

And that’s all I have to share about frigid fluid.