Flashback to 2004. My tortured four-year-old soul had no choice but to turn to the Aveeno oatmeal bath as a source of comfort for my poor, dry, sun-kissed skin. 

Flash-forward to two weeks ago. An unsuspecting, sleep-deprived Lizzy sits at a rustic table inside a popular vegetarian restaurant, La Vida Veggie, not even three blocks away from Beaverton High School. A smoothie. Not any smoothie. A ‘spiced warm pear smoothie’ sits before me.

I lean forward. My lips meet the brim of the meagerly washed mason jar that the restaurant substitutes for a cup for some reason, and the fumes of nutmeg and squishy, baked and blended pear waft up, towards my eager nostrils. As I take the first sip, I have an epiphany. What is this? What am I drinking? Did someone bathe in this?

The answer to the last one is no. Someone did not bathe in it. Yet, my mind was telling me that someone had. 

I had a revolution. This smoothie, this (weirdly underwhelming yet $9) smoothie tasted exactly the same as the oatmeal bath water I had as a small child would have tasted. Who knows—it could have tasted exactly the same. I was a weird kid. I don’t know how the spiced, warm pear smoothie and my childhood Aveeno bathwater smelled/tasted so similar. And yet, I was okay with it.

One question still bugs me. Sure, the smoothie and bathwater could have tasted the same. But how? Where did the taste of the spiced nutmeg come from? I understand that the spice came from the nutmeg and other seasonings in the smoothie, yet…what was the source of the spices in my bathwater?

Maybe some questions are best left unanswered.