Scents of the South...

When I was a young thing, my mother would send me out to steal magnolia blossoms from our neighbors' trees because she loved having them as centerpieces on the table.  I was the neighborhood thief.

That was a time and a world in which I probably could have simply asked for the blossoms.  There were enough trees on our blocks and the ones around us that no one homeowner would have a noticeable reduction of blossoms.  I know this because I spread my pilfering far and wide.  Mother told me to get them for her.  I did.

I never asked.
I never learned to ask.

What I learned is that when you harvest magnolia blossoms for a center piece, you have to be very careful not to bruise the leaves in the harvesting.  Otherwise, you will end up with an ugly brown mess rather than a strikingly beautiful bit of creation, a living piece of porcelain.  The contrast between the ivory white of the blossom and the black emerald of the leaves is stunning, is the beauty of creation that leaves me breathless and struck dumb at the extraordinary craftsmanship of the Creator of the Universe.  And the fragrance?  There's nothing comparable.

I miss magnolia trees.
I do not miss being a thief.

When the woman I have known since I was fifteen came to visit in October, she wore gardenia body spray.  Each morning that Wynne got ready, I was embarrassingly effusive with my adulation over the aroma wafting from her person.  Utterly effusive.  Utterly embarrassing.

I do not know why.

I do not know why the smell of gardenia affects me so deeply, so profoundly.  I do not even know what I am feeling when the fragrance fills my nostrils.  Something.  Something deep.  Something profound.  Something overwhelming that leaves me wanting to fill the entire house with gardenias, to make every breath I take rife with that scent.

I do not know why.
I wish I did.
I wish I could remember.

When my friend left, she gave me the bottle of her body spray.  My embarrassing effusive adulation made her laugh and smile and, as a counselor, made her happy for me.  Something is there.  Maybe something I will learn about the whys and wherefores of me.  I have not actually used the spray on my person.  Instead, I have sprayed it on my pajamas and on my GREEN sweater.  I have sprayed it where the smell will linger.  Even on Amos.  [He needs another lavender bath].

I suppose I should not have been surprised when I opened a Christmas package from her to find a large bottle of the gardenia body spray and a bottle of gardenia lotion.

The other day, when we were talking, the murderous dreams came up.  The murderous dreams and being dead inside.  I try not to talk about those things with her because she is a counselor and I am trying so hard to pick up a friendship that was 22 years in the making and yet four years absent.  We are strangers and yet we are not.  Anyway, it came up because those two things haunt me and terrify me, spiritually more so than anything else.

My friend said two things of note during the call:  1) that I still have too many emotions and thoughts to process and understand, especially because I do not really know how to identify or navigate most of them emotions and 2) that the part of my brain that would keep me from murdering, from rationalizing the right and wrong of such an act, is not active when I am dreaming.

In short, she told me that she expected me to still be struggling nightly with emotions and thoughts and that if I were not, she would be concerned.  The same was true about the dreams. It is much better to be a murderer in dreams ... especially for someone whose mind is working out the havoc of such deep wounds.

I wonder why I crave so deeply to breathe air redolent with gardenia.
I wonder if I will know by the time the gifted body spray bottle is empty.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!