Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge: Day 5 - Frangipanis

Lilacs are my Mum's flower. Roses for my Grandma. 

They say it runs in our family. Us women. We can talk to flowers. No, that's not right. Flowers talk to us. Not all flowers though. 

Let me try that again. We all have one particular flower that we can talk with. 

Mine is the frangipani. 

We're not born knowing which flower is going to be ours. It finds us. Or we find it. 

When I say "talk", I don't mean in words. I guess I mean more... communicate. 

Let me tell you how I found out about frangipanis. You'll see what I mean. 

I was a teenager at a party. It was a summer evening. I'd been talking to my usual bunch of friends. But it was one of those magic summer nights. The kind they write songs about. 

I left my friends and went and sat near a frangipani bush. My Grandma says I heard them calling. Maybe I did. But I sat there, surrounded by these beautiful, tropical summer flowers - with their moon-coloured petals and their sunshine-centres. I was just really happy and dreamy. (No, I hadn't been drinking!) I just wanted to remember the moment. It was perfect. 

A boy in my group that I thought I liked came over. While we talked, I got the weirdest feeling that the whole frangipani bush was turning its back on this boy. I got really distracted by the sensation. And I think he asked me to go for a drive, but I wasn't paying attention (oops!)

The frangipani bush went back to normal. I felt the difference straight away. But I didn't realise then that the frangipanis were talking to me. Then I called another boy to come talk to me. We didn't talk long, just long enough for me to realise that the frangipanis stayed normal. 

Then the new kid in my school came over. He was quiet and kept to himself, but he'd already put this aggro kid in the year above in his place. I wasn't sure what to make of this new kid. But he came over with this grin I'd never seen on his face before and he said, "you belong here. With these flowers."

Suddenly the frangipanis released all this beautiful perfume. And we got showered in it. They knew. 

That was it. We sat there and talked all night. The frangipanis listened and laughed with us. 

We had frangipanis at our wedding, of course. We bought our house because of the frangipani bushes in the ftont and the back. 

And as I sit here now in the shade of a frangipani tree in full bloom, lightly caressed in its perfume I look down at my daughter in my arms and I wonder which flower will talk to her. 

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Thank you to the awesome Sarah Brentyn for the chance to play in this Five Photos, Five Stories challenge. It's fired up my imagination and I've loved it!

I've tagged the brilliant Marj to take up the challenge and I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with :-)

The “rules” of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge are:

1) Post a photo each day for five consecutive days.
2) Attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or a short paragraph. It’s entirely up to the individual.
3) Nominate another blogger to carry on the challenge. Your nominee is free to accept or decline the invitation. Just have fun.