Our lilacs are blooming, their scent perfuming the air and filling my head with memories of the day we planted them. The shoots came from the backyard of my childhood home in the town where I grew up. Mom, spade in hand, dug out small saplings and told of friends and neighbors who had given shoots to her years before. After years of gathering different varieties, her collection of pink, lavender, dark purple and white lilacs was the envy of the neighborhood and her particular delight. Her delight became mine the weekend we planted those shoots in the southwest corner of the yard of our new home.
Yesterday morning, I grabbed the clippers and tramped across the dewy grass, hoping to find enough blossoms to make a decent bouquet. But when I slipped behind the spruce trees and stood beside the lilacs, the size of the bushes rather than the abundant, lush blossoms nearly bowled me over. The dozen shoots, barely three feet tall when we planted them in the early 1990s, had multiplied into a solid, seven foot hedge.
When had the lilac saplings spread and grown until they were identical to the ones in my mother yard? When had it happened? I thought back through the years when we moved into this house, the kids young, Mom still teaching. I thought of Dad’s death in 1997, the sale of the house where our parents raised us, and Mom’s move to her house in our town, where she lived for twelve years. I thought Mom’s illness which recently led to the end of her life as a homeowner.
And then I knew when it happened. The answer was as delightful and poignant as the bouquet in my hands. “Just in time,” I thought as the scent of lilacs filled my heart. “Just in time.”
