every spring, during all the years i was away from michigan, my thoughts turned toward lilacs.

i remembered the purple lilacs by the back door, the white lilacs behind the house, and the pale violet lilacs around the neighborhood.

i remembered the lilac bouquets in the middle of the kitchen table. they were usually in a white hourglass vase with a red & yellow flower on it.

i remembered my youthful desire for a wedding bouquet of lilacs. (though i wasn’t entirely sure how to reconcile a spring flower with a fall wedding.)

i remembered the scent. it was sweet but not cloying, floral but not heady or overpowering.

to me, lilacs were spring.

when i moved to portland, i fell in love with tulips.

i loved the rainbow of colors, the waxy green leaves, the soft wide petals.

i loved their arrival – early in the year, when the grey + rain threatened to overtake me.

i loved the way the flowers drooped, slowly, over the edge of the vase, as if they were too heavy for their stems.

i loved the way the petals dropped, slowly, one by one.

even as i reveled in the tulips, i never forgot the lilacs.

to me, tulips looked like spring, but lilacs smelled like spring, and every year i missed them.

this spring, lilacs were not in my memory, but in my life.

i watched lilacs blow in the wind while wandering around the neighborhood with the pup.

i gathered lilac bouquets for the kitchen table and my bedroom and my grandparents’ house.

i watched the birds come and go from the bird feeder nestled in the lilac bush by the kitchen window.

i buried my nose in the blossoms, and closed my eyes in pleasure.

in the scent of lilacs, my past and present said hello.

it is spring.

yes, it is spring.