Saviors Come in All Forms
How a fragrant plant led me through a difficult childhood
Grandma always arrived with live plants on Easter Sunday. One for each of the four of us. Because this was the day Christ was supposed to return, she believed we needed a live symbol of Jesus to reinforce this myth.
In the first year I remember, she brought one plant for me and one for my sister Lisa. Two years later she brought three plants because my brother Vince had arrived. Three years after that it was four plants, our sister Laura had joined us that year.
My mother planted and nurtured each of these roses, gardenias, camellias, jasmine, lavender, and lilies, just like she tried to nurture us. She believed if one of the plants failed, Jesus may call her home, or wield some other catastrophe.
My parents did not believe in spending money or precious water on plants that did not produce fruit; so, the only opportunity for superfluous foliage was gifts, usually from grandmother.
Despite my parents’ frugality and 1960s thinking, our verdant California garden began to host new, beautiful, fragrant, flowering plants. Most became bushes, while others grew to resemble trees.
After our first Easter in our new house, my gift from grandmother, night- blooming jasmine, was planted outside of my bedroom window. It was a small straggly vine-like plant; Mom was not sure it was going to make it. Next to it was a beautiful kumquat tree our father had relocated from our former orchard. It once had been half-dead, but it thrived in its new locale, also outside of my window.
One summer, my father, a teacher, built this house with his friends. As a consolation for moving and changing schools, I was provided with my own room, unlike my siblings. I felt so special, and mature, lounging in my own bed alone, underneath the windows above. The weather was so temperate, that I hardly ever closed those windows. Outside, just inches away, our beautiful garden and orchard thrived.
Unfortunately, my family on the inside of those walls began to wither. Cracks and fissures had erupted between my parents; alcohol and cigarettes were their panacea. Later, my mother, in the midst of alcoholism, didn’t even notice when another woman became my father’s distraction. They remained married and their four children were forever wounded.
My parents noticed little about my life, there was no bandwidth left after dealing with their own issues, or my younger sisters and brother. As I became a teenager, my own room became my own retreat. Often, I would snuff out the unhealthy noises of the house by covering my ears with a pillow.
The pillow, however, did not stifle a sweet aroma that entered my room through the window above my bed. Around sunset, whiffs of a divine origin began to invade my olfactory glands. As it began to bloom, the jasmine was subtly entering my room riding on a passing breeze. Later in the night, when the jasmine was in full bloom, it often mingled with fog from the sea. By midnight, my room was full of more fragrance than air, yet I never reached up to close the window. The sweet perfume of nature enveloped me, soothing me throughout the night. Then, with the first rays of morning light, it mysteriously disappeared.
As the jasmine bush grew, so did the nightly perfumed visits. Meanwhile, life as a shy untethered teenager had made me susceptible to a pedophile, my best friend’s father. Not yet armed with adult coping mechanisms, and with unavailable parents, the best way for me to process this secret, was silently, alone in my room. It was there that my steadfast evening visitor came to me and did not harm me. I was safe; I was loved. The jasmine bush became support and compassion, it surrounded me and held me until the fear inside of me stopped shaking. I was not alone.
At times of utter despair, the anticipation of one more night of slumber with the jasmine saved me from self-harm. As my rescuer, my sacred guardian, my savior, it got me through the night countless times. Without it, what may have become of me?
