19 April 2025

 

Only too late in my life have I come to understand that when one is curious about an event or memory of one’s past the persons who can answer a question have to be alive.

That means that the answers have to be left to the imagination.

As today is Rosemary’s birthday (she would have been 81) I have to imagine what it was like when we first shared a bed.

I do know that it was in the loft of our good friend Raúl Guerrero Montemayor’s apartment on Calle Herodoto in Mexico City. There was not bed up there. It was a hard floor and a couple of pillows.

Today when I was walking Niño, taking the route that Rosemary taught him I passed by a neighbour’s house on Trutch. I saw the white camellia. I know we had one just like it in our Kerrisdale garden that we salvaged from a nearby house that was soon to be demolished. We never knew its cultivar name.

My rules, when I scan plants, are that they have to be from my garden or from a friend’s garden. I did not feel too guilt when I cut this bloom. The flower somehow reminds me about a pure, gentle lovemaking with my Rosemary. It was about a mutual discovery of our bodies.

I never did ask her what it was like. With my imagination I think this bloom defines that first time.