Mother's Day Lilacs

First Posted May 10th, 2009

I woke early one spring morning more than 25 years ago with a terrible realization. I looked at the clock, it was 7:05 a.m. It was Sunday, so no one would be up for a few hours. Maybe I had time to figure something out. I quietly slid down off the top bunk and got dressed without waking my brothers. It was Mother’s Day and I had to find my mom a gift.

Buying something for her was out of the question for a boy who didn’t see money very often. This gift was going to be homemade. Suddenly, remembering how much she liked the smell of lilac flowers, I decided on a plan, and set off through the neighborhood on a mission.

As I started, I thought it would be easy to find a lilac bush. I even thought I knew exactly where one was, just outside of our sprawling apartment complex. This is one of my earliest memories of being out and alone in the relative quiet of the early morning. The air was cool and the shadows were long as I walked down the street in search of the bush.

It took me longer than expected to reach the spot, and when I got there it wasn’t even a lilac bush at all. I trudged on, wondering if I would even find a lilac bush before having to give up and head back for home. At last, near the point where I had decided I would turn back, I found a lilac bush and cut off a few purple-covered branches with a butter knife.

I don't remember much about the walk home. I don't remember arriving home or giving the simple gift to my mother. In fact, I don't remember any other moment at all from the rest of that entire day. What I do remember though, is that she loved the flowers. Not in the way she always loved any gift I ever gave her. No, this was more definite, more genuine, more sincere. I don't remember the specific moment, but I do remember the way I felt when she received the gift. This was a Mother's Day gift, a Mother’s Day morning I remember only because I had hit on something that felt right. I had done something in my simple way that had made her feel good. And that in turn made me feel good as well.



Every Mother's Day, I remember that morning. I still think about the walk, and remember the sun coming up over the mountain, the birds singing, the quiet, and the good feeling. Also, I remember to give my mother lilacs. Hopefully, not in a boring or monotonous way, but rather as a tradition, that after a few years was just not something that could be ended.

In fact, one year after I gave her the flowers, she specifically requested that I always give her lilacs on Mother's Day. At the time I was irritated with the request since I had always done it anyway. But, through the years I have fallen back on that request in moments when it seemed ridiculous to give the same gift again and again, year after year.

I have tried to be creative with the gift by offering variations such as a lilac scented candle or a note pad with lilacs printed on each page. I have bought potted lilacs and given them as a gift that will keep giving in years to come. One year, when I couldn’t be home for Mother’s day, I carefully packaged some and mailed them to her. Every Mother’s Day since then, including today, one of my brothers reminds me of the rotten, moldy pile of flowers and how excited our mother was to receive the gift.

About three years ago, I found some while shopping for groceries with my family. There they were, all nicely wrapped in a cellophane cone, like so many other bouquets of spring flowers given away this day. It seemed strange, almost wrong to buy them like this, knowing they wouldn’t last very long. If I wanted to, and if I had more time, I could just go down my street and find some hanging over the sidewalk, like I have done so many times before. But time pressures and the ease of the purchase made it a quick and irresistible buy. And so I put them in the cart and told the girls they could hand them to Grandma when we saw her later that day. It was a week early, but it was something I could check off my to-do list and be done with. Besides, the girls were excited, and I was glad to keep the tradition going.

But it wasn’t quite the same. There was no sacrifice, no thought, no long walk, no great feeling. She liked them. She told me so as they were handed to her. She also told me a few days later about how she kept them around too long and enjoyed the smell in her home as long as she could. I can tell she still likes the tradition and hopes it will continue. And it will continue. It has to continue. 28 consecutive Mother's Days is quite tradition for someone who hasn’t held onto many family traditions. This is one worth hanging onto.

That very same Mother’s Day, I happened to be driving with my family, near the neighborhood where this tradition started. I told the children, I would like to show them a place where I had lived for a few months when I was a boy. As we turned the corner onto the wide road that led to the apartment complex, I immediately started looking for the lilac bush from years before. The same lilac bush I had already thought about this very morning. After a moment, we did pass one that seemed familiar, but it wasn’t as large as I would have expected after so many years.

We kept going and eventually turned the last corner into the apartment complex. This was the first time I had been back there since we moved away, almost 25 years earlier. Suddenly there was a flood of memories about the time we spent there. Cool mornings waiting for the bus, hot afternoons swimming in the community pool, evenings in the small grassy area next to our building, kicking the ball back and forth, and the night Kris wandered off and we found him with the help of a big police man.

Among the memories was the thought that everything was basically still exactly the same as it was the summer we moved away. Everything was the same, that is, except for the trees, which had grown large and tall over the years, in some places reaching from one side of the road, easily touching the trees on the opposite side.

I thought again about the Mother's Day tradition of the lilacs. Beautiful, and sweet-smelling as they are, there is only so much variation available when it comes to giving lilacs. But, like the trees of the old neighborhood, among all the sameness is an unmistakable fullness in the tradition. It too has grown large and tall over the years, and has taken on an impressiveness and an importance of its own.



I haven’t bought any lilacs since that day. I have come to understand the tradition is more meaningful when the blossoms are stolen. Sometimes I ask for permission before I cut. If I don’t, I never take anything that isn’t hanging in the public right of way. But, by searching for a lilac bush, by cutting off a few stems by hand, and by gathering the gift the way I did as a young boy, I am better able to reflect on the meaning of the tradition, better able to recognize how much things have changed over the years, and better able to remember how grateful I am for my own mother.