I smelled them before I saw them, and the scent alone transported me back thirty years.
It’s an odd thing, how something can become inextricably linked to a person in your memory. My grandmother didn’t have wisteria in her yard or garden in Maine when I was growing up, that I can remember. When my grandparents moved to South Carolina, after I had started college, their new house did have it. The trees the vines were climbing got removed (at the insistence of a neighbor, I believe, who worried they’d fall on her house), but Mimi kept the wisteria. She wound the vines together so they’d climb themselves, essentially creating wisteria bushes, and when they bloomed they were glorious.
So now this adult memory, rather than anything from childhood, is what I associate most with her. Seeing or smelling them takes me back to sitting on the porch, watching skinks dart along the railing, hearing the drone of cicadas, and admiring her wisteria.
Gear: Nikon Z 7II, Nikon Z 24-70mm f2.8 S
