A Men’s Cologne in a Round Bottle
Sometimes, all that’s left of love is a scent. This is the story of the only thing that ever made me feel like someone’s daughter.
You know that game, or maybe it’s more of a question, that people sometimes ask?
If someone said: What if there were a magical basket in front of you, and you could take absolutely anything out of it? No limits at all. You could pull out another planet, a billion dollars, all the gold in existence, or something completely unique, even a unicorn.
Of course, the way the question is framed already tells you that kind of experience is impossible.
So what I’m about to share is something very deep. And very personal.
I could’ve pulled out an endless youth, an everlasting love. I could’ve become president of the entire world, or richer than Elon Musk.
But I didn’t want to move to another planet.
All I wanted… was a smell.
I wouldn’t overthink it. I’d just grab the thing I want most in this world: my dad’s cologne. I’d really love to find it. But I don’t know what it was called. My dad’s been gone since 2001. Twenty-four years now. That’s already more years than I’d been alive when he died.
I really loved his cologne. He didn’t visit us often, so I don’t have many memories of him. But that scent, I wish I could find it again. To open a door, behind which there isn’t my family's story as I know it, but scent. Memory. Loss. Love. I don’t know how. It’s probably impossible after all these years.
I’ve never smelled that cologne on anyone else.
Remember, right? I could’ve summoned a unicorn.
But I wanted the smell. The only thing that’s left of my dad. His scent. His presence.
This story isn’t just about a cologne.
It’s about one of the few moments in my life when I felt I belonged to someone. That I was wanted. That I was loved.
My dad was far away. He visited rarely.
That smell, it’s what remained of him in my heart, in my soul.
And if the scent remained, then I remained too. Then it happened.
I was loved.
If this conversation were happening in a therapist’s office, they’d probably say something like:
“You don’t really want the smell of the cologne.
You want to meet the girl who knew her father existed.
Who knew he had his own scent.
You want to go back to that space where you weren’t ‘wrong.’
You were just a daughter.”
And then, of course, the therapist would try to validate my feelings. They’d say, with that warm tremble in their chest, the kind we all probably hope to hear when we finally open ourselves up in a session, after all, we’re talking about a magical basket here, right?
“You’re still a daughter.
Even if your dad’s gone.
Even if the scent is gone.
Even if you don’t remember its name.
You’re a daughter.
And you have the right to miss him.
You have the right to want that scent back.
You have the right to be that girl again.”
And to that, I would say to the therapist:
“You know, you’re saying those things again. And I kind of get why you’re saying them.
Because they probably work for everyone.
In therapy, I mean.
They’re natural things, right? A father. A daughter.
But I’ve never really felt like a daughter.”
I mean…
Not without this smell.
I loved my dad, and I missed him so much. But… he wasn’t around.
And my mum didn’t let me love him.
Well, not that she literally didn’t allow it.
But you know that whole thing, that trap, when your parents split up and the one who stays punishes you for loving the other one?
That was my mum.
She didn’t forbid it outright, she didn’t stand there with a whip or anything.
But in our family, the concept of “loving your father” just didn’t exist.
It was unwelcome.
And all I knew was that my mum hated him.
Because when she wanted to insult me, she’d say I was “just like my father.”
Then he died.
And we never managed to reconnect.
We never had a relationship to restore in the first place.
I’ve tried to find that cologne, by memory, by associations, by descriptions, trying to track its trail like a dog in the rain.
But my mum made me clean.
Whenever my dad was supposed to visit, I would clean.
Every. Single. Time.
That’s what I thought Father’s Day was.
Because, well, he was coming, right?
The house had to be clean. You get it.
And just now I realised how that pattern has been eating me from the inside.
A man is coming over, the house needs to be clean.
And it’s my job to make sure it’s clean.
Not Mum’s, strangely enough, mine.
Like I had to prove something.
Like I had to earn it. Earn him.
And often… he just didn’t come.
He promised.
We waited.
And he didn’t come.
That happened too.
They had a complicated relationship, Mum and him.
And with me… well, I waited for him.
Like how you wait for Father Christmas on Christmas Eve.
That part, at least, I think my mum allowed.
To wait for him like Santa.
But to love him like a father?
No. That wasn’t allowed.
And that cologne,
It’s all that’s left.
When I sat on his lap, that scent… that’s all I remember of him.
I cleaned all day on Father’s Day this year.
The house had to be clean.
My therapist would mumble again:
“It’s not about your dad. And not even about your mum.
It’s about the girl who waited, who loved, who tried, who cleaned, who believed, and still didn’t get anyone.
Not him.
Not her.”
And there’s truth in that.
Because I wasn’t just not a daughter.
I wasn’t even allowed to be one.
My mum made me into an opponent. A rival. A witness to her pain.
“You have to choose a side.”
I don’t think she ever said it aloud, but I remember how quickly a wish turns into a command, and how fast a command becomes a sentence, to be hunted down for disobedience.
And me?
I just wanted to sit on his lap.
Just to smell that scent.
Just to be in love, in safety.
Just to say, “Daddy.”
Just to be a daughter, for a little while.
Let the smell say that word back to me, just once.
But instead I got:
“You’re just like your father.”
“Clean up, he’s coming.”
“He didn’t come.”
“It’s your fault.”
I was made responsible for other people’s destruction before I even learned how to write.
And here I am,
A grown woman,
Still trying to earn that love
That never came.
That smell, it’s not just a fragrance.
It’s the last thread connecting me to a love that might have been allowed.
Allowed, if only for a moment.
On my father’s lap.
You chase it like you try to catch light through a crack.
Like trying to guess a color from its shadow.
And I think I have a right to that.
My therapist said that cleaning is my protective reaction.
“You’re not just like your father.
You’re yourself.
You’re the one who wanted to exist.
To be liked.
To wait, and to be met.
You’re not a daughter who wasn’t allowed to become one.
But now, you can be that to yourself.
You can become your own father.”
But the truth is,
I can’t.
And maybe you’ll ask:
Why not try to find that scent again?
By the era.
By the notes.
By memory.
To pull out even just an echo of it…
You know, that’s a good suggestion, thank you, but…
I’ve tested so many perfumes over the years, even ones that reminded me slightly of it.
All those classic colognes from back then…
But it’s been, like I said, a quarter of a century.
Even back then, I don’t think it was something common.
My dad liked to stand out in a crowd.
Only once, years after his death, I thought I smelled it again.
In a crowd, on a busy city street.
It was so fast, I didn’t even have time to process it.
I should have run after that person. Asked them, “What perfume are you wearing?”
But I didn’t.
I froze, right there.
Because in my world, ever since I knew it,
That scent was His.
And I’ve remembered that moment ever since. I asked myself many times if that was the moment when I sided with my mum, when I chose silence over hope. When I tried to “opt out.” Even if just for a second...
I’ve tried so many times to find that cologne.
But I don’t want to fool myself anymore.
You, reading this, might think: You know which one it is.
You’ll say, “It sounds like Creed. Maybe Hermes. Maybe…”
It’s likely they don’t make it anymore.
Maybe it wasn’t even popular.
But someone wore it. Maybe even your father.
Maybe someone will read this, a mother perhaps, and wonder if their child, too, has a version of a father they aren’t supposed to love.
Maybe someone will pause before they try to “opt out” of that story.
And the cologne, I think I’ve accepted that it just… doesn’t exist anymore.
And most importantly,
You can’t recreate it by notes.
Because it didn’t smell like a perfume.
It smelled like my dad.
It smelled bold, round, and forbidden — the way I imagined a man would smell for years, until I finally let one close.
Like a shadow on the wall, you can’t quite tell what cast it. Like an ache. Like a painful choice.
That’s how this scent is for me.
Like a shadow of my father.
The notes in it were His.
It had this warm, close-to-the-skin kind of finish.
Soft. Rounded. Intimate. Not sharp. Warm.
I always imagined the bottle was round too.
Because my dad was a fuller person.
A men’s cologne in a round bottle.
I think I’ve smelled every round men’s fragrance bottle in the world by now, and none of them were it.
In my imagination, I named it “My Dad.”
He was a large man, bald.
And my mum made fun of that baldness.
Whenever he wasn’t around, which was always, she mocked him.
Now there’s no dad.
No bald head.
No round bottle.
No lap.
No love.
But what I do have,
Is me.
And the magical basket.
From which I can pull anything I want.
And I don’t choose a billion dollars.
I don’t choose a leading role on Netflix.
I don’t choose fame, or even eternal life.
I choose a scent.
Warm.
Beautiful.
Kind.
Forbidden.
And endlessly protective against the entire world.
Just for a blink,
To be eight again
On my father’s lap.
I choose the scent.
My silence, spoken out loud.
A library of feelings, where stories aren’t just told, they’re lived.
If you’ve found yourself here, something’s already reached you.
This is where stories begin.
alexandrasokolova.com