Utterly Scentless

I bought a clay pot planted with a few dainty spring flowers. Some petite daffodils and a miniature hyacinth. My grandfather bought a single potted hyacinth every year for my grandmother at Easter time. It could’ve been pink, blue, or purple. They come in many eye-catching shades. She loved the scent.

One year when we visited, my grandmother was happy to show us the flower that stayed lovely for a couple of months. Easter had long passed. We were impressed. She had a knack with flowers. Beautiful vibrant colors came to life in season in the bed that lined the area in front of the porch. But how was this flower still so perfect when it should’ve passed on weeks ago? Or why hadn’t it been planted in her flower garden?

She let out the secret behind her knowing smirk. A few days before Easter, my grandfather brought it home as was his habit for many years. For some reason, the scent was not the same. In fact, the fragrance was strangely faint, if not entirely missing, from this violet blossom. She watered it. That usually perked up the aroma. But no. Maybe it was the greenhouse effect. Those greenhouse flowers have no scent.

After a few days of waving a hand over the flower toward her face, watering, poking the soil to cajole the distinctive smell, the lightbulb lit. She pinched the petals, bent the leaves. The perfect, scentless hyacinth was a fake. “Plastic!”, she laughed.

My grandfather looked for perfection. He found it. They were both shocked to realize it was plastic and the “soil” she’d poked and watered was also fake. How realistic it looked. It fooled them both.

My grandmother knew that every year at Easter my grandfather would buy her the flower she loved. But it was the plastic one they remembered endearingly. It’s the one I remember.

I bought my planter with the hyacinth because it reminds me of my grandparents love for each other. I knew they loved each other but it’s not something they were very demonstrative about. I might never have known of this annual small act of love if it were not for that utterly scentless bloom.