I get emotional about lilacs. My grandma had them growing beside the front porch on Manomin Street, my five-year-old daughter used to pound their blossoms into “lilac perfume,” and along with that other spring staple, the peony, they always adorned the graduation stage at the school where I spent 25 years. During lilac season, I put them in every room in the house.
I think that lilacs are a more authentic resurrection flower than their expensive and regal cousins, the lilies, Without fail, the lilacs appear when the sun warms the ground, in alleys and farmyards, by lakeside estates and vacant lots. Driving out of the city recently, I saw lilac hedges next to windswept farmsteads and realized that the lilacs had been there as long as the farmhouse had – possibly longer. The ones in my alley are older than I am by a long shot.
One of my favorite writers, Patricia Hampl, writes a lot about lilacs, and coined the term “lilac nostalgia.” She points out that the lilacs are immigrants, first brought to the Midwest by Czech immigrants, carefully-wrapped roots important enough to be given precious space in loaded parcels and trunks. They were brought here, and they thrived. They still do.
Of course, some associations are bittersweet. For American poet Walt Whitman, the blooming of the lilacs in April, the same month in which Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, served as Whitman’s yearly reminder of Lincoln’s death, which occurred “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed”. Yet he writes:
“In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house,
near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing,
with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate,
with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle…… “
They are early flowers, spring flowers, just as Christianity is “a religion of the dawn,” as my friend Devon says. When the lilacs bloom, you know spring is here. We have survived winter again. New life is appears and the lilacs announce it as boldly as the angel did at the tomb.
See you in church.
Barbara
