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THE MAGIC OF MIMOSA

I’ve always marvelled at the many wonders of a tree.  In the place where I was privileged to spend a large part of my growing up years, there were trees of more varieties than I can remember.  The most beloved of them, to me, were the Mimosas and Casuarinas.  But most of all the Mimosas.  They formed an avenue to the side of the driveway leading to our house, and it was amidst their branches that I have had some of the best times, and the most poignant, of my life.  As a ten year old I climbed to the top with my friends and held secret club meetings there – in a bid to emulate our role models from Enid Blyton’s books.  As an eleven year old I huddled in the branches with that same group of friends as we held hands and prayed for the girl who had been with us on those same branches just the day before, who lost her life to a kraite bite.

  As a thirteen year old I lay back against the leaves and wrote poetry and dreamed.  At fourteen I picnicked in their shade with a transistor radio and my mum and sisters for company. At twenty two I buried my pet cat right by the trunk of my favourite Mimosa tree in the avenue.   At 25 I introduced my trees to my husband …and now I return with a childhood friend, whenever nostalgia brings him homewards, and stand there looking up into the swirls of green; feeling the love of my Mimosa trees wash over me as they welcome me back.   And in their shelter, I know that each time I return I shed the person I am… and return to the girl I used to be.  For in the shade of those changeless Mimosas, I reconnect with the part of me that, cleaving to them, will never change.