Gardenia

Right between the 2nd and 3rd chapters of John, the hurried resting place where moisture soaked right into the pages of my bible as our family traveled hundreds of miles to our new home. The petals have dried and the holy words have gathered up the fragrance and the tears and the hurt and the hope and the goodbyes.

It hurt to see him weeping over my children when we said those painful goodbyes. He had turned away, stumbling up the path towards the refuge of his home when he stopped short. I watched from the car, wondering if heart failure was settling in. He said he would die without us. I suddenly feared this would come true. But he veered to the left and made his way to the gardenia bush.

He paused for several moments, looking them over. Searching for that one goodbye blossom. One pure white, no crinkled edges, no faded brown lines, no small black ants scurrying through its sweet center.
He pulled one off and made his way back to me. The lump in my throat growing larger the closer he got.

He is an ornery old goat. My Abuelo. Critical, pushy, meddlesome, childish, angry, fierce in his love and irreverent in life. I love him even when I want to escape him.

He handed me this gardenia. Pushed it through the window in one spiteful sweep, pressing it roughly into my hands and looking at me with wistful sad eyes. The cold AC in our van diffuses the scent quickly, we watch in silence as he makes his way back to the house. Abuela stays on the porch, tears rolling down her brave smile-for-the-kids-face. He enters the house and closes the door, walks to the picture window and watches us pull out of the driveway. I watch as his shoulders shake through the shadow of the pane that separates us.  The gardenia carries us away back to my parents home. Then I carried it inside and flipped through a few crackling pages of my bible and pressed it between John 2 and 3.

We all have those scents or sensations that send us rushing into a memory of something. There are elements of life that lead me head first into memories of my four grandparents. Everything from sarna to sawdust to the sunset orange pulp of a mango or the creamy center of an avocado. Gardenias….

Gardenias are a romantic flower. Mysterious in the way it unfolds, delicate petals with a moody temper bent on ruination the moment humidity spikes, uncompromising in the strength of its scent. It is a pleasure to touch, purrs in your hand really. A Cuban love song almost isn’t a love song unless this flower’s name is whispered somewhere in those lilting lines.

For me, this flower is not my own love story, but my grandparent's romances.

My mother’s parents dancing together surrounded by a cloud of piccolo notes  and somehow I think “gardenias.” My father’s parents arguing in the kitchen as they make a batch of ajiaco together. Each adding salt when the other’s back is turned. The heat from the stove, the open window, the harsh words, the flashing tempers, the unraveling…and somehow I think, “gardenias.”

Gardenias are the warm bowl of frijoles negros on the table. The freshly baked loaf of cuban bread on the pallet. The sound of mango tree leaves rustling in the wind weeks after the last piece of fruit has been harvested. The soft rapid sounds of spanish radio falling in the kitchen like rain drops. Gardenias are the feel of wrinkled brown hands grasping my own hands. The feel of slipping my newborn son into the arms of someone who will cloak him in love.

Today my bible dropped off the wood table and onto the floor. The pages spreading awkwardly on the floor. Bits of messages and cut outs of handprints scattering and the slight crunch of a once green leaf. And suddenly, the smell of gardenias.

Is it any wonder that tears flooded my eyes the moment I drew breath? A deep ache spreading throughout my body? A not so deeply buried grief for what I have left behind for these Pennsylvania mountains? It was all wrapped in this oh so familiar scent.

I thought of his dearly loved face. My ornery old goat, Abuelo. The other three that stand beside him in the line of my family tree.

I miss them.

And for the rest of my life, I will open the book of John and inhale that sweet scent of memory and love and unfurling petals and remember them.