Their scent loiters in the kitchen, the bedroom—a scent registered from birth—of life, of possibility, of love.
One whiff ignites a memory of a drive across the Minnesota prairie with my grandparents. Lilacs were everywhere: at abandoned farms, next to a leaning barn, by a fence, ringing an outhouse, flanking the foundation of a deserted farmhouse. We took cover in that farmhouse to watch a thunderstorm swab the prairie. “This must have been the kitchen,” my grandmother said. “The mistress could wash her dishes here by the window and smell the lilacs,” she surmised.
After the storm, we emerged to a prairie perfumed with distilled lilac. And there, growing in the center of a rusted old threshing machine stood a lilac bush bent with rain. Its partially opened petals pressed against the earth. The delicate blossoms belied their endurance through brutal Minnesota winters.
Farmers planted long rows of lilacs as windbreaks. My grandfather remembered a fire that jumped from house to barn, and then burned two mile-long windbreaks of lilacs. Their smoldering embers gave off an incense of lilac that lasted for weeks.
We stopped at a cemetery, and atop a grave, a lone sprig of lilac. My grandfather, quick with numbers, noted its occupant was dead 17 years— but her husband, his name inscribed next to hers, was still among the living. “Ya, he must have just been here,” he said, remains of his German accent still evident 85 years later.
Yesterday, I listened to a friend’s regime of pills: morning antidepressant, evening sleeping pill. The possible side effects of the antidepressant: “may cause thoughts of suicide.” The side effects of the sleeping pill: “may cause morning grogginess.” I bring her a bouquet of lilacs, hoping their perfume will alter her state.
My prescription: May be taken before meals, after meals, during meals, at bedtime, and upon rising. Take three times a day, 30 times a day, 100 times a day, or as often as you like. Possible side effects: None. But you may want to sing, want to loaf, want to banish futility, want to surrender to their perfume . . .
So this is just to say: Work is suspended today. No cell phones. No emails.
The lilacs are here.