the scent of lilacs
every spring, during all the years i was away from michigan, my thoughts turned toward lilacs.
i remembered the purple lilacs by the back door, the white lilacs behind the house, and the pale violet lilacs around the neighborhood.
i remembered the lilac bouquets in the middle of the kitchen table. they were usually in a white hourglass vase with a red & yellow flower on it.
i remembered my youthful desire for a wedding bouquet of lilacs. (though i wasn’t entirely sure how to reconcile a spring flower with a fall wedding.)
i remembered the scent. it was sweet but not cloying, floral but not heady or overpowering.
to me, lilacs were spring.
when i moved to portland, i fell in love with tulips.
i loved the rainbow of colors, the waxy green leaves, the soft wide petals.
i loved their arrival – early in the year, when the grey + rain threatened to overtake me.
i loved the way the flowers drooped, slowly, over the edge of the vase, as if they were too heavy for their stems.
i loved the way the petals dropped, slowly, one by one.
even as i reveled in the tulips, i never forgot the lilacs.
to me, tulips looked like spring, but lilacs smelled like spring, and every year i missed them.
this spring, lilacs were not in my memory, but in my life.
i watched lilacs blow in the wind while wandering around the neighborhood with the pup.
i gathered lilac bouquets for the kitchen table and my bedroom and my grandparents’ house.
i watched the birds come and go from the bird feeder nestled in the lilac bush by the kitchen window.
i buried my nose in the blossoms, and closed my eyes in pleasure.
in the scent of lilacs, my past and present said hello.
it is spring.
yes, it is spring.
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Scents stimulate our senses just like our sight.
LOVELY garden-home-cozy image, Elizabeth! I just love lilacs. We have an old, big, white lilac in the garden. The flowers when fast this year… gone already… *sigh*… And now we’re officially in Summer. Happy Summer Days to you & sweet Atlas :o) ((HUGS))
Jerry: That they do! It is interesting to me that the scent of lilacs affects me so much, because I do not have a great sense of smell. (As anyone who is around Atlas for long will tell you. I think he smells like an angel. No one else agrees.
Tracy: Of course you do! I can just picture them in your life. I know .. when I wrote the ending, it occurred to me that I could have written this a bit earlier, when it was actually spring. But it just came to me! And our lilacs just left .. there are still a few flowers here and there, but not many.
Perhaps most angels are dogs.
Lilacs are what I miss about living back East. They were with me in New York, in Massachusetts and in Mississippi and Alabama – but here in So. Cal not a one!
they always bring me back to upstate new york.
my grandmother’s big white house. the porch. sitting. huge canopied trees over the drive. and yes…
the scent of her favorite lilacs.
you gave me wonderful memories to visit with this post.
xo
Kimberley: I wish I could snap my fingers and make a giant bouquet of them appear on your table. (Well, in that case, I would want to make one appear on my table too, since their season is completely over now.)
Tammy: I can just see it. So gorgeous. I am glad they brought back wonderful memories.