Honeysuckle Memories


I noticed it on Sunday afternoon. Then it was just a faint scent that was so slight it didn’t cause much of a stir. Even as late as Wednesday afternoon, the fragrance was light. However, Thursday morning when I walked to the mailbox for the paper, the air was syrupy with the sweet smell of honeysuckle blooms. If I’d been asleep for months, upon awakening I would know that it was mid-May because of that particular nature’s perfume. It’s one that sparks so many memories from my childhood.

Honeysuckle vines were always thick in the woods behind our house. They were healthy and began producing that sweetness during spring. Getting up in daylight and then smelling the honeysuckle made going to school easier. It reminded us kids that the days were numbered before summer vacation. Softball games during recess and school field days were events we knew would be held during those last days of school. The smell of honeysuckle acted as a drug that made concentration on school work difficult. It called us to come, play, and forget about English tests and science projects.

Mother always held a year-end party for her students during this time of year. Back in the good ol’ days, the kids would walk from Ball Camp School to our house, a journey of a mile or more, and then they’d play in our yard, which was large enough to accommodate a game of softball, as well as allow those who didn’t participate to have room to roam. Mother would have food prepared for the class, and the rest of the afternoon and early evening was spent in play and fellowship. Sometimes Daddy would ferry kids home when their parents couldn’t pick them up.

That honeysuckle sometimes was present during painful times in life. Daddy suffered the effects of cancer in its last stages during that time of year. He traveled back and forth from Ft. Sanders Hospital and home. Jim and I tried to cause as little commotion as possible so that he could rest as we kept our naïve belief that Daddy could get better. Mother lived the very last weeks of her life during the same time of year. She kept the curtain and window open so she could see the blooming mock orange shrub and smell the mixture of its essence and that of honeysuckle. By the end of August and the first of June, both parents were gone.

Most of all, May and honeysuckle bring to mind celebrations. Jim and I recall the smell so much because we spent so much time outside as kids. On our birthdays we received new ball gloves, a baseball, and a bat. For hours we stood in the front yard and threw baseball. Some of that time was spent chasing errant throws or digging the ball out of tangles of thorns in rambler rosebushes. I recall my eighteenth birthday. I’d worked the afternoon cleaning the red trim around the Burger King where I worked. I came off the roof burned to a crisp. As I drove down Ball Camp Pike, the honeysuckle was thick in the air. I pulled into the driveway to discover Mother had planned a surprise birthday party for Jim and me. It was also during the time of honeysuckle that graduations from high school and college occurred. Those were times spent with family and friends.

Somehow, some way, I’ve blinked my eyes and time has flown. I sometimes wonder how I got to be this old. My frame of mind is much the same that it was when I was in my twenties. The smell of honeysuckle is still thick in May. However, I’m gaining on sixty, and it just doesn’t seem possible. I suppose the honeysuckle has again used its power to trick me. It’s for sure that whenever I smell it in the air that I shed years as a snake sheds is skin. In honeysuckle May, I become a boy again and inhale the joys of memory with the sweetness in the air.

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