Taking vacations in Iloilo during my childhood days, my aunts always took good care of us at our paternal home. Of course, there was always good, home-cooked meals. But this time I write about something a little different from the usual stories of food, relatives and friends, and going around. This is about something we use everyday - bath soap (trivial though it seems). I have a memory of one of my aunts justifying opening one of her imported soaps on the occasion of our vacation. She had many in her closet thanks to my cousins who were then based in the Middle East always sending her care packages. The packages usually have expensive cosmetics, lotions and soap for their mother who was at that time a public school teacher at the local elementary school. These were not so common brands at the time like - Dove, Ivory and the imported versions of Camay. There was also the imported version of Lifebuoy, which is how I learned about the product.
Fast forward to the present and I still patronize products that I used back then. There's a certain nostalgia about the smell of Lifebuoy, for example, that I brings back memories of vacationing during my childhood years.
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| Lifebuoy soap has one of those distinct scents that's practically the same as the ones I used decades ago. The smell brings me back in time. |
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| This is a Unilever product that's now manufactured in Indonesia. |
We used a different brand soap at home at the time. I think it was usually Safeguard and at time Irish Spring (favored by Tatay). So it was somewhat refreshing to have a different soap for showers.
