The Smell of Lilacs

Following is an excerpt from The Smell of Lilacs, the whole essay can be found in Stories of Strength.



If you’ve ever smelled lilacs, you know what hope smells like. They seem to know how hard it is to make it through the winter, so they put everything they have into producing the most beautiful-smelling blossoms they can muster. As a child I would lie under the lilacs for hours and breathe them in while Dad took down the storm windows. They seemed to appear out of nowhere and suddenly everywhere you looked bushy lilacs held out massive clumps of flowers, proudly releasing their magical smell. I could almost taste the scent in the air and it made me want to skip.


As I grew up, I never forgot about the lilacs. I store them in my mind the other three seasons, and in spring I prowl the neighborhood where I live to catch the fleeting smell of lilac bushes growing against strangers’ fences. Perhaps because it is so spectacular, their bloom doesn’t last long. I know I have to find them in time or I will miss them entirely. Breathing in their scent carries me to another world where my only concern is getting inside in time for dinner.

At least that’s how it was until Dad’s stroke.