When I was twelve, we moved into the house across the street. Built in 1892, it featured stained glass windows, a skeleton key for the front door, and a living room big enough for my younger sisters to skate across the hardwood floors. In the back yard, tucked behind the laundry room and hedged in by boxwood where wild raspberries grew was a lilac tree.
Winter in the rainy Northwest wasn't the brutal wasteland of the Midwest and it didn't require the endurance of the Northeast. Instead it was a series of cold, rainy days that made us all long for a hint of sunshine, a bit of warmth. Snow fell on occasion and brightened the gray until it was turned to muddy slush and the rain continued.
In a place where green surrounds you year around, the tender sprouts poking above the soil in early spring went unnoticed until they burst into blooms. Brilliant yellow daffodils, royal irises, pastel hyacinths, and the tiny blossoms on the lilac tree. My mom filled the house with flowers as soon as they could be cut using garage sale vases and water glasses. Though the skies remained overcast, a fire burned in the fireplace, the rain continued to fall, and the weather barely nudged up, I knew spring was finally here.
The first spring, I followed my mom's lead and cut lilacs for my bedroom. I set them on my desk next to the ancient typewriter where I painstakingly tapped away at my stories. They were pale against the Pepto pink walls - the result of mixing my own paint with a can of red and three cans of white - their scent a sweet perfume almost cloying.
As the days lengthened and got warmer, I kept the lilacs on my desk, letting their fragrance transport me to a forest where Pan chased a nymph who turned herself into lilacs. In the language of flowers, they are innocence, the harbinger of spring, first love. For an overly romantic girl who lived mostly in her head, they were ball gowns and waltzes, a handsome stranger asking her to dance.
Always spring.
When I moved to California, I found lilacs but, with their delicate blossoms and love of cooler weather, they were fleeting, blooming in brilliantly sweet swaths just as the apple trees blossomed and then dying before the last of the white apple petals could fall.
Gran's house boasts five lilacs, their height reaching far above my head, and their branches dripping with blooms. Her house sits quiet and empty most of the week, only to be filled with activity on the weekends. Soon, it will be sold and the lilacs will belong to someone we don't know. Yesterday, I dropped strawberries off for the kids - a more Californian sign of spring - and paused before getting back into my car. Elizabeth and I walked to the flowers and began picking them, some for Gran's house and some for mine. When we finished, we had armfuls of the flowers. We kissed each other in the way she likes - first rubbing noses, then bumping foreheads, finally kissing pursed lips with a satisfying smack - and I came home, putting the flowers in an empty jar.
My home is filled with flowers, their bright colors collecting in garages sale vases and pretty water glasses. In a mason jar, on the corner of my desk next to the laptop where I tap away at stories sits a bouquet of lilacs, their intoxicating smell transporting me to a Pepto pink room and a girl dreaming of the future.
1 comment:
This is just so lovely, Mandy.
Beautiful in every way.
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