I grew up knowing most of the wide variety of plants in the front yard of our house. I don't know how many were there when we moved in, and how many were the careful cultivation of my father, but I learned to recognize their smells, their textures, their colors, and their life cycles. I knew that the deep pink peonies would crack open their buds, revealing a crescent moon of color, before bursting open overnight and always in time for Mother's Day. I watched as our rose bush bloomed from late June to early November some years, inches of snow freezing the pale pink petals. We had chives, thin stems topped by spiky purple balls that looked like a Dr. Seuss creation. And we had a sage plant next to the front porch, pale green leaves, textured and bumpy, looking fuzzy from a distance but rough to the touch.
This sage plant grew exponentially every year, sending up stalks of lavender flowers, star-shaped at their opening and rounding to a bell-like curve at the stem. During the summer months, huge furry bumblebees hovered around the flowers, dipping lazily and flying heavily away in a drunken circle. Sometimes I picked the long stalks to fill an empty quart jar, but usually I pulled just at the leaves. Rubbing my fingers along the rough leaves, I lifted my hand and let the minty fragrance fill my nose and mouth. I plucked the oblong green leaves and chafed my thumb along the patterned top, feeling the spine of the leaf held in my other fingers.
My dad often gathered short branches of the sage plant and tied them together with brown twine to hang up in our kitchen. I thought the small bundle looked pretty, but I was always disappointed at how quickly the dried leaves lost their smell. I loved to pluck a single leaf and carry it with me, putting it on my nightstand, but within a few minutes the delicious fragrance was already fading away, the weight of the leaf melting. It was a smell that always reminded me of home, though, and when my parents moved from Orem to Draper when I was 18, they took part of that sage bush with them and replanted it next to our new house's porch stairs. I was very glad they did; it wouldn't have truly been home without it.
When I was 22, I moved across the country to the beautifully green city of Pittsburgh. I had never been anywhere so lusciously rich with plants and trees, and I was thrilled to watch the leaves turn brilliant colors through the fall months. I was homesick, though, especially during the first few weeks. I missed a lot of things, especially having familiar things around me to anchor me.
One afternoon, I was walked home from the grocery story, two heavy bags of groceries in each hand, trying to hurry to my front door before something--either my arms or the bags--gave out. As I rounded the last corner and started up my block, a familiar pale green caught my eye. I paused, my attention completely caught by the sage plant growing prolifically in my neighbor's yard. It wasn't tall, like our sage plant had been. Instead it grow out, branches combing the ground like vines, but as soon as I reached out and fingered a textured leaf, grocery bags forgotten, I knew that it was my sage, a small piece of home in the middle of Shadyside.
I must have been there for a full five minute, sniffing, touching, breathing, and picking leaves to take back to my house. I was still in awe at my miraculous find when I put my groceries away and went to the top floor to put my leaves on my nightstand. But as I placed them in a careful pile, I could tell that their fresh smell had already dissipated, and I felt a wave of homesickness wash over me.
I knew, though, that I could always go back for more, that when I needed something from the West, I could bury my face and hands in the smell that triggered memories of my childhood, of my home. I couldn't take the fragrance with me, no; but home couldn't come with me, either. It would still be there when I went back, and then I could go back out, armed with dried sage green leaves like a talisman against forgetting where I came from.
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