Lilacs

Yesterday after I had gotten home from work Dianne was all excited and wanted me to come with her to the back yard where the lilacs were in bloom. We had planted the lilacs in the back yard a couple of years ago and for one reason or another have never been able to enjoy the fragrance and sight of their blooms. The first couple of years we actually forget we had planted them until too late in the year to enjoy—not so this year. By the time I had found the stocking hat to cover my bald head Dianne was back in the house with a number of cuts off the lilac bushes. I was immediately overtaken by the strength of the cuttings fragrance. I was also immediately transported in time and place to 1957 or 1958 and t our farm in Boise, Idaho—we had a row of lilacs behind our house and in the front yard by our garage, the lilacs flanked the garage leaving about 36minches of space making a lilac covered walk way to our garden. The lilacs were purple and white and hung from the branches like clustered grapes. As I said the fragrance was over whelming and I thought the flowers lasted all summer long, but they could not have the bloom is but a few weeks and then they are gone leaving nothing but rich green leave and new sprouts pushing up from the ground. Long tender almost willow like in their flexibility.

I was not necessarily a bad kid but I was precocious, ask my older sisters they who really know. I remember during this time there seemed not to be a day which passed which I was not in trouble for one reason or another: teasing a little brother or sister without mercy, not getting homework or chores done, smoking a corn cob pipe or worse, stolen cigarettes or cigars. But when I did get caught for one of these many infractions the punishment was getting whipped with, you guessed it a lilac shoot, usually against bare legs since by this time of year I lived in cutoffs.

I was handed a butcher knife and told to go out to the garage and cut a willow. I would take as long as I could to execute this project to stay the pain—but, I could not wait too long because I wanted the sentence carried out before my dad came home because if he administered the punishment the punishment and shame would be worse.

The lilacs are beautiful and smell is divine as I roll back and forth infront of the table where they sit reminding of the exquisite pain of young bark against bare legs some many years ago.