Last week Facebook posted some photos I had shared three years ago… as their way of showing me they care about me. I don’t believe that for a minute, but I was happy to re-experience the thrill I had the day I took those photos.

For years I had driven past this patch of stone with all of it’s cactus plantings, but the full moon had been the night before, and on this morning every single cactus had a flower! I was so thrilled to witness this miraculous event that I stopped on my way to work to walk among them and photograph them. They even had a soft scent.

Seeing the flower photos again, they brought to mind a delightful comedy, “Cactus Flower,” starring Goldie Hawn and Walter Matthau back in 1969.
And they also reminded me of one of my favorite perfumes then, “Desert Flower.”
Wait, let’s revisit that… it wasn’t called a perfume, it was called a toilet water. And as much as I wanted to be sophisticated about wearing perfume, the name cracked me up. My younger sisters and I would laugh our fool heads off, wondering if they actually used toilet water to make it.

Truthfully, I didn’t care what they used to make it, it had every single one of the fragrance notes I loved; jasmine, ylang-ylang, cedar, patchouli, musk, vanilla, sandalwood, and ambergris. And more than that, it was advertised as Modern, Mysterious, Magnetic.  All of the groovy qualities I wanted to embrace as a teenager. I felt delicious and decidedly modern when I wore it!

It’s only now, more than half a lifetime later, that I can see that toilet water was a very poor translation for eau de toilette. “Water for bathing,” not water from the toilet. But, it was a fantastic trip down memory lane. Thank you, FB.

XO Donna