lilac love

I just remembered the lilac bush at the top of the yard at the house I grew up in New Jersey. I walked by it every day on my way home from school, our three legged cat tracking me back from the bus stop. Lilacs--the look and smell of them--remind me of spring afternoons and the east coast and my younger self and backpacks and lovely things I can't quite name. So I like them. I like them so much I made a whole group of visiting relatives stop at the Woodland Lilac gardens to walk along paths draped with the heady blossoms of my childhood. And it was perfect. Minus those sunglasses, which looking back I will probably regret having worn in photographs.