You’ve only got two hours if you want to make it to the Kilauea post office on a Saturday. Weekend hours got cut back a couple of years ago. I’m in line clutching my parcel to be mailed.

The contents are a project, which for now, shall remain nameless. It’s a culmination of something I’ve been thinking about for eighteen months and working on, diligently, for five.

This labor of love is two inches thick, heavy with content, and shipping priority, delivery confirmation requested.

As I wait in line for my turn at the counter, a woman in her seventies steps inside the door carrying a tray of gardenias.

“Good morning, would you like one?” she says to each of the handful of women that stand there. One by one, we beam smiles, choose a bloom and inhale happily.

I pick one that’s still budding but exuding a fragrance all the same. “Thank you.”

She leaves the final selection for our local postal worker who pauses at the package scale, takes a flower and says “Oh, my favorite!”

And with her delivery complete, the woman bearing blossoms leaves with an “aloha,” and then, it’s my turn to mail my hefty parcel.

I’ll take the gardenia gift as a good omen. Send my project to Chicago wafting on the perfume of Kauai backyard flower bushes.

It’s the way we ship here on the Garden Isle.