Roses

I have never had an acute sense of smell. I only realized this in recent years, after marrying a man with a nose that detects and deciphers nuanced scents with a skill far beyond mine.

Husband can smell rotting food in the fridge long before I discover it by spotting the seepage from something that is devolving into a liquid morass. He has the keen ability to season the beans to an exquisite and delectable flavor, because he can connect the smells of the seasonings with the flavors. Me? I shake in some hickory smoke salt and call it good. Husband claims to be able to tell when whales are off the Pacific Coast, because he says they poof out a certain halitosis that drifts onto land, and his nose picks it up. Like as not, if you stand by him at a coastal viewpoint when he’s smelling whale breath, you’re sure to spot at least one of the leviathans surfacing out there. Husband not only smells these things, he can find the words to describe a smell—tangy, sweet, spicy, sharp, and so on—along with relating his detailed memories to accompany the scents.

Don’t get me wrong; I do have a sense of smell. I love the scents of sandalwood, of cedar wood, of lilacs in the spring, of bread baking, of milky-sweet baby skin, of spicy coconut curry, of my dad’s Old Spice cologne from my childhood, of the chempaka flowers on the tall tree I used to climb by the fork in the path between our house and the mission hospital in Malaysia. But my sense of smell lives only in the moment, not particularly in connection with memories triggered.

Except for roses.

My earliest memories of roses are of my mom trying to coax blooms out of her rosebushes set into the hard red dirt of Thailand. Somewhere long before me, probably in California where they grow well, Mama’s first love had been roses. She was bound and determined to have her own roses in Thailand as well. And when Mama was bound and determined, she generally got what she wanted.

My other early memory of roses—probably tied to my mom’s dedication to her Thai rosebushes—comes from my grandma’s house in La Puente, half an hour’s drive from downtown Los Angeles. Grandma’s driveway was lined with roses of every hue, but I don’t remember going out and sniffing at them. My more acute memory of roses at Grandma’s is of the rose perfume perched on the Pepto-pink sink in the bathroom of her old California bungalow.  I remember patting her perfume on my neck as a child, and coming out of the bathroom reeking. It left a rather unpleasant, cloying smell, and I quickly disliked the way it clung and seemingly clotted in my nose as I sat with my brother watching the morning cartoons on the TV. Fake flowery perfume, I have realized, is best avoided.

As I ponder it, I’m not sure if it’s the scent of roses that I remember the most, or the rose blooms themselves. Although I’ve received bouquets of roses through the years, I enjoyed how they looked more than how they smelled. For one thing, florist’s roses don’t effervesce like roses should. Perhaps in seeking to create the longer stem and more perfect shape and color, the horticulturists genetically engineered the scent right out of them. And so it is that my memories of scent have tended to dissipate as the rose fades.

I don’t remember smelling roses again until about a dozen years ago in Washington state. Husband and I had a route—“the loop,” we called it—that we’d take on our walks from home. We’d head out the front door, round the corner onto Davis Street, and climb the hill to the stop sign. Right there on the corner was an unremarkable house, one of those little ones with wood siding, almost too small to live in, with a big huge shade tree rising up out of a weedy yard. And roses along the sidewalk. 

Because the sidewalk came up alongside the retaining wall on Davis Street, those roses were just about at hip level as we climbed the hill.  They were enticing, scent unstrained by meddling horticulturists, for sure. As long as they were blooming, spring to fall, we stopped to sniff them. Husband and I would hopscotch each other along the wall, sniffing blooms side by side and remarking on the variety of scents. He would call me to sniff a particular one, and I’d accuse him of already breathing in all the scent and leaving none for me. Or I’d remark, “I like this one better,” and call him over to sample the one I’d discovered.

It was a ritual of sorts, smelling the roses at the house on the corner of Davis and 12^th Street, a nod to the folk wisdom that one should “stop and smell the roses.” And indeed, we should. There is something about the scent of a rose that fills the soul, a sweet and gracious calm, a reminder that just being in a beautiful way in this world, whether someone notices you or not, is a good thing.

So when my mom turned 90 years old last month--my sweet mama who also lives in the moment and doesn’t connect with her memories anymore, but who enjoys a gracious conversation with you if you stop by to have one--I thought of roses for her birthday reception. Pink roses.

I went to see the best baker in town with a Pinterest picture saved on my phone and asked, “Can you make these cupcakes with pink roses on them?” 

The baker looked at the picture and said, “Yes. But that is fondant icing and it will cost you about 12 dollars a cupcake, because we have to roll it out and shape each rose by hand.”  She noted the shock on my face as I pondered the cost of 75 cupcakes at $12 apiece. “We can do something different that will be beautiful but won’t cost as much,” she said. She went off into baker-vocabulary, describing how it could be done. As that is not my language, I won’t try to reproduce the description. But I arrived on Friday to pick up the cupcakes with the pink roses on them, and they were lovely.

And the rest of the decorations? A large pink rose bouquet and pink rose corsage, of course. Because at 90, with memories that waft in and out of your ability to snatch them back for a moment, you still are going to be in love with your first love.