Of all the many fragrant memories of my South Florida childhood, one in particular has stuck in my mind and stayed with me even today, as a redolent symbol of all that is β¦happy. I was ten or eleven at the time, and it was a day I had forgotten my house keys, so I had to wait in the back yard for my mother to arrive home from work. It must have been late March or early April, for the citrus tree orchard in our back yard was in full bloom.
We had grapefruit trees, lemon trees, lime trees, and a stand of orange trees that stood at least twenty feet tall. It was a heady late afternoon out there beneath the orange tree canopy, the slanting sunlight beating down upon those trees from that breathless blue Florida sky.
Everywhere around me, the no less heady, nearly narcotic fragrance of orange blossom in all its many shadesβ¦the soapy floral, the hint of the orange zest behind it, the thick, sensuous, indolic aspect that somehow stupefied me to such an extent I have no memory of how long I sat there, only that as I sat on that branch and waited, I was aware of only one thing β the simple joy of breathing in, of inhaling all that was supremely beautiful and supremely happy, which was precisely how I felt.
No matter how much my life attempts to drag me down and chew me out, nothing , but nothing makes me happier in an instant like orange blossom. It adds its own power-packed punch to countless famous perfumes as one of the four boldest white florals β rose, jasmine, tuberose andβ¦orange blossom. A while ago, I posed a question on one of the Facebook fragrance groups about orange blossom.
This is the orange blossom I recall from that afternoon that burned itself into my memory, the rose, the jasmine and the tuberose somehow all adding up to all the nuances contained in that one fatally fragrant blossom β and the cumin a deal-breaker for some adding its own intimations of carnal intent.
