Last evening I stepped outside at about ten o'clock to the first truly warm evening of the year. Temperatures were still 60 degrees or so, and the wind, which had been an annoying presence all day, had calmed a bit. The cottonwood in back, all 40 feet, undulating in the gusts, cradled the raccoons waiting for me to fill the feeders and go back inside. Wind is one of my least favorite weather characteristics, with extreme heat being about the only thing that vexes me more. In the winter, it's the wind that makes being outside on a 30 degree day unbearable. Spring winds bring down owl, hawk, crow, and songbird nestlings. It is rarely welcome. But last night, it brought the scent of lilacs. I could smell them everywhere I walked as I filled the feeders. No need to bury my face in the blossoms; the wind and warmth allowed them to perfume the entire yard.
Lilacs, native to southeastern Europe and Asia, have little to no business here. They aren't even native to the U.S. The flowers are fussy and purple, two things I dislike in a flower. They are decidedly boring and rather unattractive when not in bloom. They don't possess many many appealing characteristics except for one....putting a bouquet of lilacs to my nose is inhaling childhood. I no longer know if it is their heady, cloying fragrance I love, or the scent-memories their blossoms induce. I am sometimes temped to buy lilac perfume, but never have. No matter how appealing the thought of lilacs whenever I want them, I really think I only want them once a year. Lilacs every day would dull the edge of the memories and eventually, the memory and the scent would separate completely.
So for one week a year, every time I smell lilacs, I am ten years old again and it is my birthday.
Growing up, there was always a bouquet at my place on the kitchen table when I got up on the morning of my birthday. Birthdays in our house also meant I could choose breakfast and supper; for breakfast my dad made me trout with lemon butter, caught the evening before. Supper was ribs with homemade barbecue sauce and dessert German chocolate cake with coconut frosting, all made by my mom. If it was warm enough (50 degrees was mom's rule) I could wear my pale blue sailor dress to school. Sounds completely horrifying now, but I did love that dress. I can't remember even one birthday gift from those days, though I am sure there were many. The entire day was magical, the gifts having nothing to do with it.
When we were first married we lived in a second floor condominium. No yard, no grass, no lilacs. On my birthday the first year we were there Mike returned from his midnight shift with ten 5-gallon buckets, all stuffed with the lilacs he had spent the night cutting for me. I will never forget the sight of so many lilac filled vessels covering the floor of our living room. For a week our house was filled with fragrance. That is one of those memories that will linger nearby until the end of my life, and it, along with the trout and German-chocolate cakes of my childhood, is one of the best.
Birthdays now have lost most of their luster. I can't expect trout and lilacs for breakfast, and supper is whatever I make. It has become, by the almost-age of 41, just another day. But that is really okay. Because when our lilacs bloom, ancient transplants from the farm that Mike planted here for me, I am ten years old, the world is perfect, and everything is still ahead of me.
