The Scent of Hyacinths

I grew up in Arizona, so a lot of traditional garden flowers were unfamiliar to me. As a young adult, I did some backpacking in Europe, and one spring I found myself in Scotland. If memory serves, I was in Glasgow – not a city known for transcendent beauty. But I had taken the bus from my hilltop hostel to downtown. (The bus driver lectured me the whole way there, “William Wallace was a lowlander!”)

I turned a corner and was transported as magically as if the paved town square shaded by stone buildings had been a fairy ring. Raised planters filled with the most exquisite purple flowers perfumed the air. Lilting fairy music echoed from the stone walls. Some moments impress themselves on your mind with greater permanence than any paper photograph. The mind memory formed by this moment is a wizard’s photo, engaging all the senses. I can still hear the music and smell the flowers when I close my eyes, nearly 20 years later.

The magic lasted even after I realized the source of the music was a radio station van parked at the edge of the square. They were blasting Loreena McKennitt out of roof-mounted speakers to promote her latest album. On my CD player at home it never quite lived up to my memory.

The discovery that those heavenly flowers were unfashionable Victorian bedding plants called hyacinths did not dim my love for the flower, though. When I bought a house a few years later, one of the first things I did was order a bunch of heritage Queen Marie hyacinths. When I saw the play Howl’s Moving Castle at Book-It Theatre last winter, they emphasized that Wizard Howl always wore the scent of hyacinths. To everyone else, that probably signaled his vanity and a bit of effeminacy. But to me, it reinforced his stature as a heart-stealing man of mystery. To me, the scent of hyacinths is always bewitching.