Ylang Ylang

When I was sixteen in Grade 11 in a small northern town, my friend and classmate Norma travelled to Vancouver with the basketball team. Insufficiently sporty to qualify, I was sad to miss the exciting trip to the city. To my delight, my friend brought me a gift: a glass vial of exotic perfume. Perusing the tiny label I read the words Ylang Ylang, handwritten in black ink. After carefully pulling out tiny cork, I sniffed the perfume — heavenly.

Less than two years later, enrolled at UBC, I visited the Persian Arts store, then on Granville Street, for the first time. There I admired exotic treasures and discovered many little vials of scent, all different and all redolent of unfamiliar and faraway places.

At Totem Park residence, I immediately met and clicked with Pat, who was to become a lifelong friend. On the other hand, my friendship with Norma faded. She studied Sciences and I took Arts, and our interests diverged. But my fondness for Ylang Ylang persisted. Over a period of many years, I visited the Persian Arts on many occasions to replace my vial of Ylang Ylang.

After university, I lived on Fourth Avenue, only a couple of blocks from a shop called Central Africa Imports. There I made friends with the owners and as well as discovering and purchasing similar little vials of exotic scents to those sold in the Persian Arts. Following the fashion of the era, I bought some Patchouli oil. Alas, I spilled the entire bottle on the floor of a room Pat and I rented together. The hardwood floor continued to reek in spite of my cleanup efforts, and the inability to get rid of the powerful scent of Patchouli put me right off that scent.

Time passed and both the shops where I bought my lovely little vials closed. Entering my thirties, I tried out commercial perfumes from Eatons and the Bay. But I never I forgot about Ylang Ylang, and always enjoyed a sniff when the opportunity arose. Recently, I bought a bottle at Saje.

Aficionados of aromatherapy make many claims as to the virtues of this essential oil, which is distilled from the yellow flowers of a tropical tree. Considered beneficial for the skin, it also calms anxiety and depression, and functions as an aphrodisiac. These days I rarely apply perfume, but it’s a lovely feeling to open a rich vein of youthful memories by simply uncapping the bottle. Thanks again, Norma, for introducing me to this unusual scent.