Gentle grapefruit flavor
The scent of fresh flowers in my grandmother's garden in full bloom kept haunting and chasing me over the years, so that even now, on my destiny, I still can't help remembering that simple flower scent, especially in March.Even if they could extract the scent from fresh flowers into a perfume so that I could satisfy my craving to go back to the memory of any month in the cycle of the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. However, it is still nowhere near to be immersed in the gentle grapefruit scent of March in my grandmother's garden.
I still remember, when I was a child, I was close to my grandmother. My grandmother’s garden had grapefruit trees, bloomed with flower every March. My grandma told me, before the day my grandfather went to war, he boiled a pot of water with locust, basil, and lemongrass leaves, and indispensable fragrant grapefruit petals for her to wash her hair. And the distant battlefield made grapefruit trees bloomed every season, and my grandmother went to the back of the garden, picked grapefruit flowers by herself and boiled water to wash her hair, without her husband. In the letter written to him, my grandma also did not forget to press the first grapefruit flowers with all her nostalgia sent to the battlefield.
Like that, until the day my grandpa returned, he was covered with war bombs and bullets. But, as an arrangement, on that occasion, the grapefruit tree bloomed with white flowers. She welcomed him in the passionate scent of grapefruit… and he must have been pouring a spoonful of grapefruit juice on her hair that had been lost by waiting. Later, when she gave birth to my mother, then my mother gave birth to me, my grandmother still passed on that family shampoo to her daughter and granddaughter... In my childhood memories, I still clearly imprinted the image of my grandfather carefully separating each grapefruit flowers petals which had just been picked from the tree to manually marinate grapefruit flower tea, to drink during the day. I grew up in the scent of grapefruit and the love of my grandmother. Then, the sweet scent behind the house followed me forever on the journey of life.
I went to the city to study, only occasionally being able to visit my grandmother. Then I had a family, in March, I could return to my grandmother, my mother's home, to rush to the garden, to inhale the scent of grapefruit flowers that bloomed early in the morning and then gradually faded out... My grandmother's hair had faded, as white as flower’s color. My grandma knows I like grapefruit flowers, so every March when I come back, she still doesn't forget to remind my mother to pick and send some grapefruit flowers to her grandchild far away and tell me to wash my hair with locust water, not to use anything expensive, which can damage my hair. And my mother meticulously grills locusts on charcoal, then grinds it into a fine powder and send it to her daughter to make shampoo for her hair. Every time I receive a gift from my grandmother, sometimes I spend a whole day just reading books, drinking tea and relaxing my soul in the scent of grapefruit flowers.
Sometimes, in the busy traffic of cars on the road, I suddenly meet a cart of colorful flowers. In the humble little corner of that flower cart, white grapefruit flowers. Startled March! Remember grandma. At times like that, when I could not return to my grandmother, I quietly bought a few bunches of grapefruit flowers, put them on the desk and inhaled the fragrance. Then, being busy with the daily worries of life, I went through the grapefruit flowers blossom season in a hurry without notice.