Labour of Love

Stop and smell the roses, writes Dara Kell - it might just remind you of family, and eventually bring you home.

- By Dara Kell. Illustration by Nicolene Louw

A few years ago, on my 38th birthday, I found myself on the west coast of the United States of America, more than 16000 km from home, and thoroughly alone. To avoid the birthday blues, I decided to take myself somewhere fun. I did a quick search of things to do in the area and discovered that I was a train ride away from Portland, the biggest city in the state of Oregon, nicknamed The City of Roses.

My heart leaped. The Portland International Rose Test Garden, the oldest continuously operated rose test garden in America, would be my birthday treat. It would also be a pilgrimage of sorts because roses are important to my family. My grandmother Suzanna had 178 rosebushes jammed into her small garden in the suburb of Glenashley in Durban. My uncles and aunts also grew them, and so does my mother, who sends me photos from her rose garden in Cape Town. When I encounter roses - when I touch their leathery petals and lean in for a sniff - they resonate with a strange vibration, whispering something I can't ever quite understand.

At that stage, I'd been living in the States for nearly two decades. Although I went home every year or two, I desperately missed my family and the everyday ease that comes with living close by. The roses would help, so off to the Portland International Rose Test Garden I went.