Lilac season

Every May when the wind starts to feel soft instead of cruel and the sun has melted all the cold out of our bones, my older kids and I start looking for the lilacs. As the heady smell fills the alleys and parking lots and front yards of the city, the conspiratorial looks start between us and we make plans to pillage and plunder the overflowing bushes in our neighbourhood.

The first time I whispered in their ears that we should take a flower or two they stared at me like I was crazy. “It’s okay,” I said, looking around to make sure no one else was listening, lilacs, at least the ones on our side of the fences, are “public property.” When I yanked the scissors out of my purse, they expertly kept watch as I snipped a precious few flowers for the house.

When it seemed like they’d had a little too much fun breaking the rules, I gave the standard lecture about stealing and was clear that you can’t do this at the corner store and as much I might philosophically disagree, not everything is a public good. I like that tracking these flowers has become our “thing,” that they mark this season by their bloom, that we can giggle about our harmless petty crimes together.

I usually throw the loot in some vases and jars and put them around the house and we get a week or so of smelling purple flowers and dreaming about the sweet summer we now know is suddenly within reach.

The school year and the lilacs are how I keep sense of time now, already fuzzy on the old markers and anniversaries. I’ve forgotten about dates that I once used to track by the second, anticipating bad memories like the monster in a cheap horror movie. There’s so many birthdays and field trips and mismatched socks and work parties and camp sign-ups and anniversaries and Barbie names and Pokemons, my old life is buried under piles of Calendar reminders.

A couple of days ago, I let some of the lilacs we gathered sit out past their prime on the dinner table. It’s hard to throw them out, knowing the season is winding down and some of the trees are already browning, their violet and eggplant treasures shriveling up and disappearing for another year.

I was cleaning up before getting the kids from school and I caught a whiff of rotting lilac, a sweet and sickly smell that stopped me mid-sweep. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t quite get at what. It lingered in the air and I stood by the dining table waiting for the right memory to float up and take hold, for my brain to remember why the smell of dying lilacs had caused temporary paralysis.

Then finally there it was. Spring. 17 years ago and yet as the emotion took hold, could have been yesterday, that’s how close the feeling of sinking was, just growling under the surface.

I lived in the park and it was warm and the lilacs were everywhere, with a big tree right outside my window. What I remember the most about that spring was how free and hopeful I felt. I was still in my 20s, I had friends that I loved and a job I liked, that paid me well enough to pay rent and drink at the bar and buy onesies at American Apparel. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend of a few years and I was excited about that summer, ready to tan in the park and make fun mistakes. I remember biking around the city smiling that smile that you can only smile when you have few responsibilities.

There’s a version of my life where I smile that smile for the whole summer, my tan legs pedalling me between work and home and out, ready for whatever.

In this version of my life, though, that’s not what happened.

Just as the season and the soil were starting to come alive, that ex boyfriend, angry and aggrieved, assaulted me on what was an unusually warm May night, the kind where you leave your windows open for the breeze.

The spring of possibility became a summer of spoiled fruit. I stayed inside and hid from the world that only days before, I felt ready to conquer. The flowers I’d picked decayed and dried up, swimming in the filmy water filling the jam jars I’d put them in. The smell filled the small rooms.

Instead of lounging in the park, laughing with girlfriends, I spent the summer and then the fall and winter like a ghost, floating between my job and my apartment, eager to make it inside before anyone could see me.

I couldn’t be around couples or families, especially with little kids, their tender innocence too pure for me to be around, reflecting back my own shame and feelings of ugliness. There was no world where I could trust myself to be a mother, to pick a partner that was safe and deserving of children.

I dreaded spring, fearing a reminder of what I’d lost, who I was.

I plodded on, sometimes forgetting about what had happened for months at a time, but when the lilacs bloomed, I’d be right back there, seeing the bruises on my skin.

But bruises do heal and even through the harshest winter, buds reappear.

I slowly made myself whole, kept putting distance between myself and the past.

Then I met a good, kind person and we had beautiful kids and we made a safe and stable home for them and that night became a distant memory, one of many.

One day, I even realized I could bury my nose in a lilac and think only of the hope and possibility of spring, of the sweet and sticky summer the kids and I were about to have, smelling all the flowers and swimming in all the pools and riding our bikes all around the city.

Throwing these dead lilacs away, I realized I was finally giving that woman of 17 years ago the summer she was meant to have.