Floral intoxication

            Scent is a hallucinogen, a magic, transporting drug.
            Lilac blossoms in a jar remind me of my mother. One night when Mom was dying, Jim and I stealthily clipped blooms off a neighbor’s tree, to offer Mom a precious scent memory.
            On my daily dog walks, I’ve watched a bed of lily-of-the-valley progress from needle shoots to bladed leaves. Days later, from within the green curls, filaments emerge, decked with tiny buds. The buds swell into a carillon of white bells. I smell them before I see them. I kneel down, place my hands carefully on the soft ground between plants, plunge my nose into the air surrounding the bell-like blooms, and inhale. I am home, under the rhododendron bushes in my childhood back yard. Mom is inside, the dachshunds are sniffing around, maybe my siblings sent me in here to fetch a kickball, knocked out of bounds.
           
My 60th year in 60,000 words
Day 279: 148 words, TOTAL = 46,949; 13,051 remaining