Our Texas Mountain Laurel has been adorned in purple cascading blooms. The scent always takes me back to Southwest Texas State University (Texas State), as there was a long walkway seasonally walled by the lavender flowers. The trek to class was an event when the little trees were in bloom. When the air didn't smell like the river, it smelled like the grape flavored powder from Fun Dip and Pixy Stix candies.
The breeze brings the yummy fragrance into the house when the doors to the backyard are open. If I close my eyes I can imagine myself back on campus. I remember some of the characters I encountered on the way to class. I remember the frat guy who wore base; I remember the mean Prozac PETA girl, and I remember the fighting stallions.
I miss living in a place where you could safely, and without destination, walk from evening until sunrise, and where you could, without guilt and with a few new acquaintances, eat breakfast before finally going to bed. I miss the guy in the dorm beside ours who would play Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” so loud that we could open our windows and hear the music as if it were playing on the stereo in our room.
I wonder why I was in such a hurry to get out of the dorms and into an apartment. Looking back, dorm life was the best part of college, though I hated it at the time.
I wonder what I was thinking when I chose a Saturday morning class as if I would actually attend a Saturday morning class. Only I can boast that a lack of common sense was the reason I failed Philosophy.
It’s amazing how a scent can gather up old memories and press them together at the folds. For a brief second I can see right through the fabric to all of my springs, but they quickly fade and wilt like the flowers on our Texas Mountain Laurel.
