siren song

 


I didn't realize it was a mimosa tree until I looked into its branches and saw the Dr. Seuss flowers popping up everywhere. The fragrance was entirely different, you see.

My mother taught me what mimosa was. She would tickle my nose with the baffling blooms: like fairie broomsticks, each bristle white to begin, then moving pink to the bamboo green dot on the tip. But beyond its appearance, its bouquet was what was truly extraordinary.

The afternoon I auditioned for Peace Child, I was walking home, my head full of dreams, when this scent, this compelling aroma wafted across my path, and it hit me full on like a single, impossibly high note going on, and on, and on. I scanned the usual places, tree boxes and front yards, for the source of such ambrosia. My mother had showed me a mimosa blossom once before and I'd never found such a tree again, but here, unmistakably, and blocks away from where I'd first scented it, was the object of my heart's desire. I followed that bell-clear note down two city blocks before I spotted it: a lone, white pink blossom fifteen feet up in a mimosa tree. I stood beneath its canopy for a good ten minutes, breathing the air.