The Love of Carnations...

What is in a smell? A smell can unlock and release the most hidden and deepest memories that we ourselves have forgotten. A smell can instantly make us happy or sad depending on what memory is behind the smell. Smells from our childhood of crayons, makers, for me chalk, and many more too numerous to mention don't back laughter and smiles. There is one smell that still to this day takes me back to when I was 9 years old, the smell of carnations.

As I wiggled and squirmed with the scratchy white high lace collar  that was a right on my neck and the puffed sleeves that seemed to be to itchy for my arms to stand, my daddy handed me a basket of flowers. I loved them as they were pink and smelled ever so good. Many times over the next hour I stuck my nose into the pink carnations and breathed in deeply. It was sheer heaven to me. It had baby's breath with the carnations and some greenery, but I was on love with the very different smelling pink carnations.

When we were finished my daddy said since I had sat still and was as good as I could have been, I could take the flowers with me. I was delighted as we left the building and headed to the car. The black car, a long black limo. The door was opened and I crawled inside making sure my basket of pink carnations were safe and secure. My daddy and my grandmother followed me into the car and we were off. I asked my daddy what the name of the flowers were and he told me. To a girl of 9 years old I had never heard anything so beautiful as a flower named a carnation before. It just seemed to ring off my tongue. I told him the place that we has just been smelled like a carnation factory. I has noticed it when I walked in and he said yes because there were so many of them in the building.

The memory I refer to was my adopted mother's funeral and the place of course was the funeral home. The pink basket of flowers that I happened to pick out because it was so pink and beautiful was the floral arrangement from her first grade students that their parents. In 1975 the funeral flower of choice was carnations more than roses. Roses were for the very rich who died not a common school teacher in Farmington, New Mexico.

The memory while not a great one was my first real look and feel of death. For some strange reason I still to this day love the smell of carnations. The big ones not so much the smaller ones. One time in school, and I have no idea which grade, we took white carnations and placed them in water with coloring in it. We watched as the days went by how the white carnations slowly changed to whatever color water they were in. It was quite an amazing thing for me to watch.

So today as I went shopping the grocery store had bright beautiful carnations for sale. I picked up a bunch of them and put them to my nose and breathed deeply. Yup, the memory did not fail and neither did the sweet unique fragrance of the carnations.  It is a memory associated with death but yet for me a happy one.( I was very glad and relived when my adopted mother died. I actually had been set free from physical and emotional abuse) It sounds crazy but the smell of carnations is happy death to me and I needed some happy death. So I bought two bunches of them. As I walked out of the store my nose was breathing deeply the smell that is sweet to me.