EXPERIENCING THE SMELL OF FLOWERS

Tam Nguyen

When I was a little girl, I always followed my Dad to the town center. It took us about forty-five minutes by bus from our village. He went to town to visit his friends or to take me around town and show me the life of the city. There were candy shops, toys, clothes, and restaurants. The streets were always busy with
people.

I loved to walk around with my Dad and his friends to the flower park. There are many kinds of flowers with colorful. My Dad gave me cotton candy and told me about the color and smell of flowers. He not only tell me one time, but he also repeat to me many times. I remembered it because I listened to him many times. But it is so funny! I did not understand him at all.

He showed me the color with red, pink, white, orange, etc., the different shape of flowers, iris, pansy, daisy and rose, and how to look close to a flower’s petal, how to connect in images. Iris look like mouths with the tongue, throat, and lips. Pansy looked so nice with the different color of the petal. The color made it as a butterfly. Daisy is with bunch of tiny petals white with color. It wasn’t easy to come close to a rose. It has many prickles. I got bleeding while I was trying to touch with roses. Each kind of flower had different look. This was not a big deal for me to think of them.

My father told me to smell them. It was not easy for me to describe aroma for him. Some of them have sweet, whiff lightly, intenseness. The level of smell also change depends on the color. Dark color has strong aroma more than light color. A wavelength of aroma also changed with each minute. They smell strongest at early morning or late afternoon. This thing my father and I did it slowly, each time we got together. I put all of my senses to sniff the flowers, feeling the soft of petal. A lot of people walk through life and never smell of flowers.
Butterflies flew around them. They say each up and down of butterfly’s wing changes
the world. But I did not see any change unless dinner was coming.

Day by day goes by, season changed every single second, spring is gone by and summer is coming. My father spent time studying the four seasons, practicing to get through the four seasons and circle of life in flowers. I learnt from him to empty my brain and let the aura of the flowers come in. Seeing the essence of the color and the smell of aroma, the aura changed with time as I practiced it. It changed from dark color with strong smell to colorless and fresh smell. It took me awhile to find out that colorless water with the sun will change to rainbow. Fresh smell is like spirit. I could not touch it. I could not imagine a shape, how it looked like.

Anyways, it brought me to a belief on something. It is as the aroma will expand all over the atmosphere. Later on, I grew up and understood that is the beginning of meditation. It makes sense to smell the aroma and see the aura, the experience of believing something I cannot see.

It is like climbing the mountain with different levels of aura. I like to study their meanings more to know about it. The flowers are out there and growing up every day in the wind, rain, and sun as the earth still spins in the universe. Understanding auras also explains human beings. It is simple as the air people breathe every second. I think not many people care about spirit. If we develop the spirit and be generous, we can feel the change. Actually, if we are quiet and do not change, we feel the change in auras.

Tam T. Nguyen has completed the Master Gardener Class and is a student at the Literacy Center where Dr. Smith is one of her tutors.