Christina Kim
speaker
90 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Christina Kim’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
the grief is always still there. To this day, Constantia is still a predominantly white and incredibly wealthy suburb. And while there's been a real effort to restore the land evicted families lost, there's been very little traction. But Ernestine still takes her children back to tend the graves.
And she's found that by staying engaged with her sense of smell, there's room for healing all around her.
When she steps out of her house now, the toxic bouquet of burning tires and tear gas no longer clouds the air. And in its absence, she's discovered that a piece of Constantia, of her family, was always in Grassy Park.
It's an old scent in a new place. A new bookmark in her and her family's history.
A year after I recorded my yaya on her couch in Madrid, she passed away. It's been over six years now, and yet I find that she's never that far from me. She lives in my memory, of course, and the recordings I have of her, of her monogram necklace that I wear around my neck. And she's embodied in the scent of Álvarez Gómez's Agua de Colonia. Yeah.
After months of diligently smelling an array of different scented essential oils, from lemon to clove to mint, my nose actually pricked up one day, and I felt the faint warmth of clove invade my nostrils. With time, I redeveloped the ability to smell the symphony of the world all over again. And you better believe that I doused myself in Álvarez Gómez colonia.
I smelled fresh, clean, and most importantly, I had a piece of my yaya back with me. The minute I smelled the colonia, it's like I could remember her more clearly, more fully, to the point that I could bring myself back to the moment of one of our last hugs. I love you, Yaya.
To this day, all I need to do is smell it, and I can conjure myself standing in the hallway of her home again, both of us in our nightgowns, hugging for well over a minute. I can hear the beep of her hearing aid, feel her tiny frame holding mine, and I smell the faint scent of Alvarez Gomez in her perfectly coiffed hair. It's like I'm there, and so is my yaya, in all her fullness.
I went from having no sense of smell to being able to smell a chocolate wrapper from across a room. And now I have a new reason to be obsessed with smell. I recently gave birth to my first child. She's made me think about smell in a totally different way. I'm no longer just thinking about how certain smells shape my past and identity. I'm thinking about her too.
What smells do I want to pass down to my daughter? What scents will bookmark her life and remind her of me, of her dad, of her yaya, of who she is and where she comes from? One thing I know for certain is that she will definitely know the smell of Álvarez Gómez Colonia. And she'll know that she comes from a long line of strong Spanish women, of traviesas, like my mom and my yaya.
Showing 81–90 of 90 · page 5 of 5
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