Something as sweet as MANIS

I have been meaning to write this entry for quite a while now. About a month ago, my partner gifted me with a set of essential oil kit for my use. Since these oils are known for its au natural substance and as a believer that all au natural things are beneficial to one's health and well-being, the gift meant a lot. I must confess that I have always had trouble taking doctor-prescribed pills and will only consume one if my condition was too unbearable. Don't get me wrong for I have nothing against medical sciences and its practitioners, and I have full respect for the efforts and breakthroughs they made to assist people with their medical conditions. I always think medical sciences practitioners are such noble careers.

Anyway, back to the essential oil kit, I have always loved the scent plants produce that even the smell of freshly mowed grass is most welcome. I guess the comfort I find in plants and nature is inculcated since I was a little girl. I remember accompanying and helping my grandparents to grow bananas at their tiny estate. As I recall those times, I spent back in kampung, I could vividly smell the scent of jasmine in my late grandma's hair. She loved placing freshly picked jasmine in her hair bun and the fragrant was the sweetest smell I ever sniffed as a child. I always thought jasmine's sweet fragrant really befitted my late grandmother, after all her name was "Manis" which means sweet in the English language.

There is another feature of my beloved grandma that I could never forget, her love for sweet drinks that she never seemed to run out of cordial stocks in her pantry. One of her favourites is the one she called, "sirap ros", a red-coloured mixture and heavily scented in rose essence. Over time, these scents that grandma loved so much grew in me. 

 

So recently, as the whiff from my partner's diffuser filled our living room, all those wonderful memories of the departed Sweet I once loved rushed into my mind and were played one after another with every sniff. I asked my partner for the name on the label. It is called "geranium". I told her how the scent reminded me of the dearly departed. To my partner, thank you for this wonderful gift. It meant the world to me as it made me feel like I'm in her sweet presence again.