Wandering Through The Land Of Nod.

Some thoughts on the evocative scent of lilac, praising its beauty, wondering why it’s considered unlucky and acknowledging its power to break through my brittle armour and wake up my my tender feelings.

It’s that dreamy time of year when, if you’re lucky enough to be walking down the street when the spring breeze takes a rest, your senses are filled with one delightful scent after another.  Hawthorne, laburnum and wisteria blossom fill the air and turn our world to beauty.  And laying overall, there is the scent of lilac, wafting across the road. 

Is it just me, or is anyone else deeply affected by the scent of fresh lilac? 

Maybe that’s why some people think it’s unlucky and refuse to allow it indoors. 

When I was a student nurse in the old days, when fresh flowers were allowed on hospital wards, lilac was strictly forbidden!

Is it because it refuses to be ignored?  Does it wake up unwonted and uneasy memories and feelings?

Well, I will bring lilac into my house any day, although I have found it a challenging friend.

In February 2013, my mam died.

In May of the same year, I was ambushed in my own garden. 

I was happily pouring potato peelings into the compost bin and filling up the bird feeders, which hung by the lilac tree, when the beautiful sight and scent took me by surprise and broke into my closed-up heart. 

Lilac opened the floodgates and let my tears fall.  Lilac prised angry questions out of me: 

What was going on?  How could there be so much beauty without my mam to see and smell it?  How dare spring, which she loved so much, blossom without her?

After three years, I moved to another group of churches.  It was painful to live in a place which mam didn’t know about, where no one knew I’d ever had a parent.

In the new Vicarage garden, two lilac trees enticed me when their buds first appeared, and I wondered what colour they would be.

When they unfurled into white and purple petals, I thanked God. Spring on spring, lilac doesn’t fail and I hadn’t left beauty behind.

Now, in a different home, no lilac grows in our retirement garden, but that’s OK.  Gardens around us are profuse with it and its scent doesn’t recognise boundaries.

Purple, pink and white,

Lilac presents her beauty,

Knocking on my heart.

I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the beauty of lilac, which met me in the locked-up depths of grief and opened my heart up to life which persists, season by season.

What scents are most evocative for you?

Do you know why lilac is considered unlucky?

Wander well through spring,

Mandy.

Things I Love:

• The scent of spring.
• Lilac trees.
• A vase of fresh flowers.

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