Outing Myself:Mae is, in Fact, My Middle Name

This article--a brief introduction to my namesake--is for Middle Name Pride Day.

"You smell like old lady". Breath in. Breath out. "With good skin." Not exactly words that young(ish) women the world over hope to hear from their boyfriends as they climb into bed. To hear it not once, but three times in as many weeks should be an insult. I, however, take it as a compliment. "No," I say as I roll onto my back, "I smell like Nanny."
A few weeks back, while shopping with my mom (who is, herself, many years away from old-lady-dom), I remembered that I was in dire need of face cream. We were at the supermarket, not Sephora, and our choices were ranged accordingly. As soon as I saw the familiar blue tubs, I grabbed one. Noxzema. I hadn't used it in at least a decade; I have used it every night since. It is an olfactory reminder of my childhood, it evoked instant sense-memory as soon as I twisted off the lid and dipped my fingers in the white, whipped goop. Noxzema, for those of you unfamiliar, has a peculiar texture, unlike anything else.
My great-Grandmother--Ethel Mae, my Nanny--used Noxzema for as long as anyone can remember. I--and my mother, whose Granddaughter she is--associate it as 'her' smell.It is brisk, slightly institutional, homey. It is much as the lady herself was.
I was privileged, as the only one of my generation then born, to share a generous, nurturing bond with the woman whose middle name I bear.From a scant ten years,I retain enough memories to support ten lifetimes.Were those ten lifetimes barren of all outward joy, I would be able to sustain an inward happiness, knowing that I was loved, guided and set on a solid path by my middle-name-sake.
When I have, indeed, earned the right to smell "like old lady", the man whose bed I will still share shall be only too happy when he can add, after all those years, "with good skin." And it is, doubtless, with equal joy that I will still recall the bond that held me to my family's original Mae, my Noxzema Nanny.