Jasmine Trees In August

It stops me in my tracks, transfixed and speechless. I wait for the full depth and complexity of the perfume to take hold, a split second of timelessness that unlocks so much from my heart. Sometimes I tear up, other times I smile with eyes half-closed, but I always stop whatever I'm doing and wait for the moment to fully bloom and then fade to merely a fragrance again. Looking around, I locate the Jasmine tree and make a mental note of who's yard it's in, how far it is from where I live and where I was going, and if the tree is a magnificent specimen or a parking strip treasure. Usually I continue on with what I was doing, although a little distracted.

Naturally there's a story with this, and since it has many layers, I am still loosening the knots of it and trying to see the larger pattern and beauty of it, and my part in it, good and bad. Taking a deep breath, I almost want to start by saying, "Once upon a time---" again, the people taking on archetypal roles, our behavior now mythical, our failures tragedies. And it would all be true, but my usual tactic, so I won't paint the larger than life mural story, surrounded with Jasmine trees.

When I first moved to Portland, I stayed at some friends' house for a few days before my stuff from Florida arrived and I moved into my apartment. They had this huge leafy tree shading their house in their neighbors' yard, and it was just beginning to flower. The tree kept their house cool all summer long, and then in August, bloomed profusely with little star-shaped flowers that smelled like your Auntie's jasmine perfume from long ago. I took this as a magical sign of the rightness of my decision to relocate here, jasmine being one of my absolute favorites.
An entire tree, just casually blooming in the heat of summer, not spring, and making a cool lazy sanctuary of my friends' bungalow, where I spent hours and hours that first month just getting my head around the idea I was actually here, in Portland. On the Pacific Ocean side of the country. Everything about that first month here, in August 2000, in that house with those two people, is carried along by the perfume of that tree in my mind. Having meals with them after work, sitting on the back deck in the long evenings talking in the dark, taking refuge from the sun and heat on a Saturday afternoon with all the windows open and the wind chimes playing, talking and laughing and loving every moment of being there, being here, finally. I truly believed it would stay that way, and would never ever be any different.

That's why the perfume overtakes me on the street, I'm flooded with all of this, all at once.

Because everything changed, of course. And I'm still making sense of it. I think there was one pivotal moment, for me anyway, but there were a few years of bewilderment and uncertainty when I put my best face forward when I saw them, and tried to figure out what was going wrong. My friends split up, sort of, and I worked too much, and the commute was way too long, and I was stressed over money and store politics, and she moved further away, and and and...
It all came apart. Almost 25 years in, everything unraveled. My heart was broken and I grieved for a long time. Work more, feel less. Finally this past winter, even that structure was broken beyond repair.

This summer I feel her absence in a way that I didn't allow myself to before. I wish she could see my life now, what I am now, how I live now. This is how she always envisioned me living before, all those years we were sisters and best friends, and I was scared to death to be an artist. She knew I could do it, and that is a comfort to me these days, like the Jasmine trees in August and the smell of antique roses and timber creaking in the hot sunshine. She was the main reason I came out here, and that is her greatest gift to me.

Last week I drove past the house and slowed way down. There it was, nothing changed, and the Jasmine tree shading half the neighborhood and looking so majestic, the canopy over 50ft tall. The windows in her old room were open, and I could see the same pale green paint on the edge of the wall.

You can be in two places at the same time.