I love this time of year. It is the time when the sweetest smells fill the air and my head. I marvel at the odors of May and June. The heavy musk of the May Trees growing along the drainage creek that borders our property, the sweetness of Magnolia and Honey Suckle outside our window mingles with the seductive allure of Jasmine blooming on the fences to draw memories from as many directions and places as there are fragrances. Old dreams and desires come alive in my mind’s attic. I dust them off and remember. The smells are as much a part of me as is my face. My face, for better or worse, is displayed for all to see, but the smells and the memories are mine alone. I sit on the swing beneath the Jasmine covered arbor as I write this enjoying the heady bouquet as a breeze stirs the many odors and I am fulfilled because the flower magic to my soul has bloomed, the Gardenia.

The species is not native to Alabama, but is to Africa and Asia, which both start with an “A”, and that’s close enough for me. I did not know what the small, evergreen, ornamental shrubs were growing around my patio and pond when we first moved to this house, but I smiled, offered a prayer of thanksgiving, and shed a tiny tear when I discovered the heady, white blossoms prolifically covering the greenery were Gardenias.

 Roses are wonderful, as are Pansies, Violets, Morning Glory, Carnations, and Camellia, but there isn’t a fragrance on earth that stirs deep seated passions in me as does the Gardenia. With every whiff, memories are freshened of places I remember and some I have only an inkling of, like a vision I can almost see, but is just beyond my grasp. I reach for it and my fingers brush it, but the full essence alludes me.

 “Ah ha,” you’re thinking, “he’s remembering a long ago love who wore a perfume like the Gardenia,” and you are right. I remember her well, and others since, but that’s not it, at least not all of it. “Maybe the smell reminds you of a place,” you wonder, and again, you would be correct. As I wandered and hunted in the jungles of Vietnam and the Philippines, the fragrance of the little white flowers calmed me and made me smile in the most horrible of circumstances, but that is not all of it. No, there is something else.

Whenever I close my eyes and deeply draw the aroma of the Gardenia into me, I am transported to places I do not know, see things I cannot have seen, and feel the association of people long passed from this life. The fragrance of the tiny flower is as if a time machine were taking me back, back, and still further back. I struggle to continue to inhale more of the intoxicating bouquet, but never am able to hang onto the elusive vision long enough to see its beginning, or understand its message, if there is one, but I know it is as real as the fullness in my lungs as I struggle to hold the moment.

Some will say, “A repressed memory,” some, “A former life,” others, “Memories inherited from ancestors,” and I think all would be correct, but it does not matter. The smell connects me to time, place, and peace, past, present, and future. It gives me a sense of belonging and I marvel at the gift of a little flower. I do love the smells of May and June in Alabama.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, at: www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us