My daughter wore my mother’s perfume without knowing it

Dear Delyara, My daughter is sixteen. This morning she came downstairs ready for school, and the smell stopped me halfway through making coffee. My mother’s perfume. Orange blossom and something powdery I never knew the name of. Mum died when my daughter was two, so she has no memory of her. I asked what she was wearing. She showed me a tiny bottle she found in a box of old toiletries. I had forgotten it existed. She sprayed her wrist again and said, “It smells a bit old-fashioned, but nice.” I had to sit down. For years, I have tried to give my daughter pieces of her grandmother through stories: how she laughed, how she overcooked rice, how she sang when angry. None of it made Mum physically present. One spray did. Suddenly, my daughter walked past me smelling like the hallway of my childhood. She saw my face and immediately offered to wash it off. I told her no. She wore it to school. All day, I kept imagining my mother’s scent entering classrooms, buses, teenage conversations, a life she never got to see. Tonight, the bottle is on my daughter’s dresser now. I am surprised by how happy and jealous that makes me.