The Girl Who Smelled Like Flowers

It was the summer of 1986 and the twilight of my formative years. I was twenty years old, home from college, running my own computer services business and had purchased my first car. Somehow, college students with similar interests and values manage to meet one another. And so it was that I met Julie and lots of other young men and women enjoying a break from their college careers while earning a little money in the process. My summer social life was no longer confined to my high school, my job or even my town. It was expanding while at the same time becoming more focused.

It was either at a barbeque or a pool party one Friday or Saturday evening in June when Julie and I enjoyed our first extended chat. She was nineteen years old and had just completed her freshman year of college. We asked one another the usual home-for-the-summer college student ice-breaking questions. And in that process we quickly discovered she worked just a three minute drive from my number one client’s office. It was a natural, not the least bit awkward thing to agree to have lunch together. I asked and she accepted.

While I was working in an air-conditioned office, Julie worked outdoors and in a greenhouse at a local nursery. We must have made an odd looking couple at the diner where we first shared lunch. I was wearing a blue and white striped Ralph Lauren oxford cloth shirt, pale yellow draw-string Ocean Pacific pants, loafers and dark socks. Julie was wearing a flesh-toned tank top, denim short-shorts, low quarter athletic socks and a worn down pair of dirt-covered aerobic sneakers. Both of us were dressed for our respective jobs, of course. Our real interest was in the other person, not what the other person was wearing.

Lunch during a work week was by definition a tame date. Neither of us could harbor secret hopes for what would happen after the meal. We were both returning to work. And so we were focused on what serious adults focus on during a first date: Getting to know one another. But the moment I sat back down in the driver’s seat of my car after picking up Julie at the nursery, I discovered an immediate and unexpected benefit to having a lunch date with her. Julie smelled absolutely incredible. She couldn’t have smelled better if she had heavily sprayed herself with something from the Forbe’s Most Expensive Perfumes list. And the scent of her accented our entire lunch date and lingered in my car for days afterward. She had become saturated with the scent of fresh flowers from the nursery.

Julie and I enjoyed one another’s company over lunch that day. We ended up dating non-exclusively for the rest of the summer. With one exception, it was always a lunch date. And the only “benefit” was her intoxicating floral scent which I whole-heartedly enjoyed each time she and I got together. That summer marked a significant change in my dating interests. I had realized my next serious relationship would either end in significant heartache or in marriage. Julie seemed to have the same outlook. She and I were extremely cautious about commitment while at the same time very open to a significant amount of exploratory dating. We allowed the spark between us to develop into an ember but not a flame. She had at least one other guy she was also dating non-exclusively. Likewise, I enjoyed several other individual dates that summer. Nobody seemed to be feeling any jealousy.

Behind us were so many of the attitudes and pressures I now see in Philip’s life at Hermes High School and that were then an all too recent a memory of my own high school and early college days. Nobody quizzed us on our relationship. Nobody judged how suited we were to one another. There was no pressure to move the relationship forward quickly. And my desire to indulge in kissing and cuddling—while still very strong indeed—was substantially exceeded by my desire to conduct my dating relationships with the long term in mind. It was the most honest, comfortable and emotionally healthy dating relationship I had ever enjoyed, and it set a bar for all that would follow.

I cannot expect Philip at fourteen to enjoy what I never enjoyed until I was twenty, but I do think he can enjoy something very close to it. Dates are usually but not always too big a deal in his high school world to permit the ember-but-not-flame outcome. But individual dances, IM chats, text messaging, and extended conversations during school breaks, parties, sporting events, group beach or snow outings, and even phone calls all allow the spark to slowly develop into an emotionally healthy ember without prematurely forcing the flame. Admittedly, Philip may experience some awkward moments along the way. One gal-peer Philip hugged after an extended before-school chat greatly misinterpreted his embrace. And Erica’s interest-cultivating behavior toward Philip certainly did not mean she wouldn’t be exclusively dating one of the football players within just a few days. But Philip seems capable of navigating all that. He’s had to learn to be more cautious about who he hugs. And he is still not sure about where he would like to take things with Erica. For me as his dad, I am growing in my trust of his judgment. Today, rather than giving Philip advice, I would merely like to tell him my story of the girl who smelled like flowers.