inhaling my childhood

I walked by a wild rose Sunday morning, something like 100 miles to the closest beach.

When I was a kid back there in Wareham, Massachusetts, hard by the peninsula of Cape Cod, there were these wild pink roses growing everywhere near the seemingly endless beaches in my hometown. And all over the Cape. Pink, always pink, popping out from green shrubbery. I’m pretty sure their formal name is Rosa rugosa. Here’s a quick little blurb, and a photo:

“Wild roses that grow near beaches are most famously known as the Beach Rose or Rugosa Rose (Rosa rugosa). Thriving in coastal dunes, these incredibly hardy shrubs are famous for their salt spray tolerance, deeply veined wrinkled leaves, and sweet fragrance.”

“Sweet fragrance” it says ending the description, and that is the thing. That is “it.” Was it 100,000 times I leaned in and inhaled that sweetness? Only 10,000? Perhaps 783. Some vast number of times all through my childhood and pretty much whenever I’ve got a chance since.

So, Bang!! I’m ambling down the busyness of NE 15th Sunday morning before the PZI Koan gathering and just off the sidewalk there a small bush’s worth – in Portland, OR – and I’m happy and joyful and walk past and then – Wait!! – I pull a uueey and walk back and lean in and take a deep inhale and it’s not a fib at all to say my 11-year-old self is there again at Little Harbor Beach, hoping over the hot tar lot to roses, roses everywhere, and hopping back and skipping over the heated, sugary sand and into the so warm waters of Buzzards Bay.

Inhaling my childhood.