a letter to my sister

evian -

today i wore a sprig of jasmine in the buttonhole of my blazer, a white star with my favorite fragrance.

do you remember the night blooming cereus?  a flower that blooms once a year for a single night - a large ostentatious bloom with a scent that we could smell a block away.  when we were little, your friend’s parents cut a part of that cactus off to grow ourselves one year, and we potted it in a cement potter carved with angels.  it grew on our front porch at the house in huntsville until someone - a dog or friend of ours - knocked in off the porch into the lawn, squashing the plant.  we did not witness the night blooming cereus blossom until years after, while visiting uncle mike in birmingham.  on southside, the two old gay men who lived across the street beckoned us over at twilight.  i will never forget the fragrance of that flower or the luminosity of that pale blossom.

as a consolation, i suppose the honeysuckle in birmingham is growing.  driving down the interstate, honeysuckle cascades over the red, iron rich hills through which the road is cut.  we would always drive with all the windows open, and the scent of all that wild honeysuckle was surprisingly strong and sweet as we raced down the highway.  i think the fences at our old house in huntsville upon which the honeysuckle grew have been removed.  our parents thought the honeysuckle was a nuisance, but we loved those bushes, carefully tearing the flowers from their vines to tongue those droplets of nectar from stamen.  we told ourselves how sweet that honey tasted.

madre is moving back to huntsville and i would love to visit that city.  i would love to see monte santo mountain, and the old stone structures built there hundreds of years ago.  i would love to see maple hill cemetery and its stone angels and mausoleums and those banks of identical crosses for the unknown soldiers who died during the civil war.  i want to see the old house.  is the apple tree we planted in the side yard still growing?  i think our backyard fences have been removed, and the wrought iron railing around the front porch has been removed.  our roses grew up and through that railing; red, pink, fuschia; the yellow roses that always reminded me of our grandmother, and the yellow roses we would leave on his gravestone every year as in life he had always given our grandmother yellow roses for her birthday.

roses grow well in portland.  there are whole parks dedicated to growing roses, unimaginable varietals, plants with greatly varying color and scent.  we have magnolia trees, with large white blossoms to perfume an entire block.  and the cherry trees have blossomed, turning portland pink and white with flowers.  however, my favorite scent emanates from jasmine blossoms as i walk through the neighborhood.  the small white stars produce such a sweet but delicate scent.

this is not a substitute, and i do long to see portland, to visit our childhood.  and i wish i had a house here in portland in which i could plant roses, to be happy seeing them every day as i leave the house.  and jasmine, to smell jasmine all spring.

i miss you.

christopher