Lilacs

I got a lilac at work yesterday. I work in an anesthesia practice (the doctors who make you feel no pain during surgery) and I walked back into our surgery scheduling area. One of the ladies had these purple flowers on her desk. As I got closer I could see they were lilacs! She very graciously shared one with me. Lilacs don't grow in Phoenix, so I haven't seen one in quite some time. But this person has a friend in northern Arizona who has a lilac bush, and gave her some when she visited.

I love lilacs. I always have. They are a strong reminder of my childhood in Michigan, where they grew almost wild. Every spring, for a few precious weeks, they bloomed around our neighborhood. If I rode my bike up to Torch River Drive, near Adam Wayne's house, I could sit under huge lilac bushes and just smell the wonderful scent, and be in the cool shade of the leafy bushes and flowers. Lilacs don't really feel like roses, or other flowers. They're cool to the touch, and almost damp. The individual, plus-sign shaped purple blossoms come in so many different shades of purple, some dark and some lighter, but you can't see the variations unless you look closely. There are also white lilacs, and darker purples, but these are my favorite.

I sat at my desk yesterday and today, and every once in awhile I'd pick up the red plastic Solo cup that held my precious flower. I'd hold it to my face and just inhale. The smell brought back my childhood, for a little while. I'd remember eagerly waiting for the lilacs to bloom every spring, seeing them and all their beauty from my vantage point on the school bus, and smelling them on the little bush in our yard and the larger bushes in our neighbors', the Jenckes' yard.

It brought back what seems a simpler time, of neighborhoods and friends and school. Of bike rides and summer jobs and youth group meetings. Of sitting on "the wall" eating ice cream cones with my best friend, Rhonda. I feel sad that today's kids and young adults won't ever know what it was like there, at that time. What listening to Madonna and Toni Basil and Duran Duran and Def Leppard, while dreaming of being married to my boyfriend, was like. But then, when I was living in that time, people older than me talked about simpler times, too; and they probably lament that I didn't get to listen to the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, and Jan and Dean sing. History always looks better, I think, because our minds romanticize what really was, smooth out the bad patches, and change it into a sepia-toned, happy memory that wants to pull us from where we really are now, back into it. But we can't go back. Only forward. And the lilacs will bloom next spring, too.