gardenias on my mind
Out here on 7H porch on an unimaginably idyllic Spring morning, with one of the pots of gardenia plants we bought for Linda, the one with single petals, up on the table right in my face so I don't have to lean down to bury my nose in it. In a Southerner's heart, gardenia fragrance is only equalled by the enormous Grandiflora blossoms, Southern Magnolia. White blooms turn yellow as they age but cling to the aroma until they fall off, or are lovingly touched, slightly turned, and drop into your hand.
It's gone now, I think taken out by Hurricane Michael, but I remember a morning in 1938 standing at the front door of our house and watching as my father and an old black man named Dave lugged a three-trunk magnolia to the middle of our front yard and planted it there. I mowed around that tree all my growing up years and saw it spread far and wide to cover and shade the entire lower part of the front yard.
Also, soon after we moved into the rectory at Trinity, Apalachicola, I had a magnolia tree, I think it's not grandiflora but a smaller flower, planted for Linda in the front yard between the front porch and the adjacent church building, near the sacristy door. Anytime we're in Apalachicola I check to see that magnolia tree is still there, and I'll be in love with the town and folk as long as it lives! Even though magnolia trees are notorious for roots that run along the surface, ruining the lawn under and near the tree.
Roots and the leaves that smother the grass. But one blossom and it's all worth it. Sometimes those years when Robert and I were going on our walks, I'd break off a grandiflora blossom from a tree in an empty lot bordering Massalina Drive, and bring it home for Linda.
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The wind is a bit stiff at SSE 13 mph, but with temp 83°F, it's a deliciously cool breeze off the Gulf of Mexico, and takes me back to the Spring noon in 1953 when, just having finished the last of my senior final exams at Bay High, a friend and I took a picnic lunch and drove her car out to St Andrews State Park and lay snuggled up to the enormous, cool jetties rocks, under the same hot sun and same cool breeze all afternoon. There have been others since, but it's still my first memory of feeling totally free at last.
A singularly special end of chapter memory, but certainly not an afternoon I would repeat, with my now regular visits to the dermatologist these seventy-one years later.
The friend was my best friend's girlfriend at the Time, and I don't think we ever told anyone that we did that.
Or IDK, maybe I've blogged it here before. Regardless, it's just between us, so keep your mouth shut, s'il vous plait.
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What totally prompted me to blog though was a headline article in Times of Israel, a released hostage telling that her Hamas captor gave her a ring and asked her also captive mother for the girl's hand in marriage. These things are not always requited, but the young man obviously fell in love with her.
Remember when that hostage/captor thing happened decades ago after Patty Hearst was taken captive by the Symbionese Liberation Army? I sure do. Yes, there's a strong psychological factor at play in the scenario, but it still goes to prove the main point, that at the end of our story we are all just human beings and could get along loving each other if we'd not conjured up all these differences.
Years ago, a relative criticized something in the news about a mixed race couple, black and white, marrying and having children. I remember her saying, "If that keeps happening there'll be no White people, everybody will be Tan." And I replied, that it'd be perfect because at last nobody would be different, or think they were better or worse than others, and we'd all get along.
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What would solve the issues in the Middle East? Taking down all national, religious, ethnic, racial barriers, compelling people to mix and merge and live together as neighbors for a hundred years. That's my naive, WWJD formula for peace.
Pax &c
T88&c