Commentary: After all this time, I still miss smoking

For the last three stressful days, I have really wanted a cigarette. It’s not as if I had just quit smoking.

No! I quit smoking nearly 40 years ago.

But whenever I am stressed, my first thought is — still — that I want a cigarette.

Salems. That was my brand.

But this week, I’d have smoked anything if I thought I wouldn’t have a major coughing fit and maybe get hooked again. I’ve even considered vaping — electronic cigarettes — but people look silly smoking those. Even Leonardo di Caprio, who never otherwise looks silly.

Today I was eyeing the nicotine patches at Rite-Aid, but it’s not the nicotine I miss.

When I was a little girl on Citrus Avenue, my father would send me to the corner Flying A gas station with two dimes to get him a pack of Philip Morris. Cigarettes from the machine cost 20 cents, but two pennies were inside the cellophane wrapper. He let me keep those.

It was during Lent 10 years later when I first started smoking. I was rebellious then, so rather than give something up for Lent, I decided to take up something verboten-ish. This was almost the worst of my rebellions.

Sigh. One of the bad old things about the good old days.

I had just gotten my class ring. My friends and I thought we looked so cool smoking and flashing our class rings. We went to Olvera Street and bought pastel cigarettes to match our prom dresses.

Every afternoon, we couldn’t wait to get a mile from school in Suzanne’s old red convertible so we could light up! I burned a quarter-sized hole in my school uniform, and my mother made me iron on a patch to sort of hide it. She wouldn’t replace my uniform.

I had a great summer job at Ohrbach’s on Wilshire. I started my workdays in the cafeteria with coffee and a cigarette. Cigarettes from the machine in the employee area were 20 cents a pack (elsewhere 25 cents), and no one would say “You’re underage!”

Throughout my life, there were things I couldn’t have, but I could always have a cigarette.

My lovely boyfriend went off to college. Heartbreak. Cigarettes.

I got good grades and was accepted to UCLA, but my mother wanted me to go to a Catholic college. Mary Alice drove, and we smoked and raised our little fingers to “little people.”

My all-girls college was a lot like high school, and I was bored, but I learned to play bridge. Sometimes I would skip history class to play bridge and smoke in the campus smoker.

I met a guy (who smoked Pall Malls) and dropped out of school to get married. My worst rebellion.

When I was pregnant with my first son, in the OB’s office for our monthly chat, I took out my straw cigarette case. He was aghast!

“What is that?” he asked. When I told him it was my cigarettes, he said, “What a relief! I thought it was soda crackers.”

My first husband and I were poor and miserable. Divorce. Heartbreak. Cigarettes.

I found a job. Everyone in the office smoked. Met guys, had drinks, smoked.

I met Lee. He didn’t smoke. He wished I’d stop smoking, but he married me anyway.

After 10 years I stopped smoking. By then, I was sneaking a couple cigarettes a day on the sly because Lee thought I had already stopped. I finally quit the year I turned 39.

But ever since, whenever there’s been a crisis in my life — things not going the way I wanted — I’ve felt the urge to have a cigarette.

It isn’t the nicotine I miss, it’s the moment of setting everything else aside, sitting down, taking a deep breath (even though smoke polluted), watching the tip glow and the smoke curl. Getting centered.

During that time, I’d get a grip and know I could handle it, whatever it was. That’s what I miss.

Now, of course, I know what cigarettes cost — not just the $5-something a pack but the lives that smoking has cost. The coughing in the mornings. The smell of others who smoke. Ick.

How cool smoking used to seem. How stupid now.

I’m sure I saved my life by quitting, but after all these years without smoking, I haven’t found as satisfying a way to handle stress.

A Corona del Mar resident, LIZ SWIERTZ NEWMAN is the author of “A Widow’s Business.”