I remember exactly the fragrance of the cotton gin where my father worked. Most people considered it an unpleasant smell—odiferous—but it was perfume to my senses, tied to the love I felt for my father.

The heat of late summer intensified the aroma, the dust from neighboring farms, and the sweetness of ripening grapes wafting on the breeze.

Dad brought a cotton plant home to give my brothers and me a better understanding of what took him away to work each morning. Each weekend, he cared for the plant until one day, the soft, fluffy bolls broke through the tough, crusty shells.

Each of us children squeezed the white clouds with our young, inquisitive fingers, feeling the hard kernels of cotton seeds hidden within.

“The cotton gin separates the seed from the cotton,” Dad told us.

Tiny hairs of cotton fiber, almost invisible, broke free of the boll as my little fingers extracted the seeds. That is when I understood why my nose always itched when we visited where he worked.

Even today, I sneeze when I wander through tourist shops that have shelves stacked with folded T-shirts. But it makes no difference to me. I’ll press the new, unwashed fabrics to my face and inhale. The T-shirts don’t smell like a cotton gin, but they retain the fresh scent of newly opened cotton bolls.

They take me back to my childhood and bring back to life the father I loved.