‘Shalimar,’ the Song I Wrote for My Mother, is Inspired by More than Perfume
My mother, Nancy, exudes elegance. I’ve known this since I was 5, when I first watched her getting ready for a charity gala. I can still recall her hair in rollers, the glow of her gold-and-black blazer, and the moment she grabbed a bottle of her favorite perfume and sprayed a spritz or two on her collarbone.
The scent of that perfume — “Shalimar,” a Guerlain fragrance introduced in 1921 — has stayed with me ever since. I can still close my eyes and almost taste the vanilla and bergamot top notes. It’s a complex, seductive, sophisticated scent, and was apparently quite popular in the ’80s, when my mother discovered it.
According to Wikipedia, Shalimar is mentioned during the third-ever episode of The Love Boat, the 1981 movie The Four Seasons, and the 1988 movie Working Girl.
But for me, the perfume’s legacy is not only nostalgic, but symbolic of my mother’s strength, grace, and sophistication. In her prime, Nancy was an elegant, educated, determined woman who could do anything — obtain a PhD, commute to a government office job 45 minutes away (and still make it home to cook dinner!), and plant backyard gardens overflowing with dozens of varieties of flowers.
My mother is only 75 and has lost so many of her cognitive abilities to dementia.
She can no longer plant flowers.
She is losing her memory, slowly, and it is almost cruel that there is a framed doctorate from University of Maryland on the wall of her home office (in my childhood home, which she shares with my father).
There are no more invites for galas, no occasions for spraying a high-end perfume on her collarbone.
This is not what I expected old age would be like for her, though I do understand that I am luckier than many of my friends my age whose mothers have passed.
What I’m struggling with, still, is the visions of how I thought my mom’s golden years would play out. My maternal grandmother was 89 when she passed away two weeks after a stroke, and in reasonable mental health before that. My paternal grandmother’s dementia didn’t become noticeable until her early 80s. We had so much more time, so many more years, together.
Writing the song “Shalimar” for my mother has been a difficult, cathartic process. Getting the vocals right – the high notes and the low ones – took multiple sessions with a producer and two different vocal coaches. I postponed its release twice because I wanted it to be perfect.
And now, here it is. There is no more time left to put it out, or fuss over little details. I’m releasing it now, for Christmas, because I want my mother to hear it while she can still appreciate it. I want her to know that I wrote it for her, and for us.
I hope that others love it as much as I do, perhaps savoring the memories of their own mothers, their own experiences with joy and regret and the passage of time.
Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.
The song is so beautiful! It evokes nostalgia for the person I thought my mother was when she was young and she’d don her red lipstick and pearls. The lyric “I wanted to be you” is expressed with such passion and pain. It speaks to that universal feeling of childlike admiration for one’s mother.
I can’t imagine how hard it is to watch your mom deteriorate in this way, knowing the respect she garnered. In awe of how well you were able to funnel that emotion into such moving work!