Happy Tuesday, My Friend!
Last week, Kevin and I were in northern Wisconsin for close to a week. We landed at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, rented a car and started the nearly four-hour drive to our cabin on Lake Superior. The weather the week prior to our visit had been quite warm, so evidence of spring was all around us—green grass, leaves on trees—year-round life in Florida, but not Minnesota. There was one thing, though, that I spotted that hurtled me back to the 1970s instantly!
Lilacs.
Wait! Stop! Don’t click out of this email! This won’t be a story about flowers, I promise! Well, not entirely, anyway.
Oh, my heavenly days—lilacs! It’s not just that they smell intoxicatingly glorious, but they take me right back to the end of the school year. The end of the school year.
Besides Christmas and one’s birthday, perhaps the most joyful and exhilarating time for a kid is the end of the school year. Unbeknownst to us kids, the teachers were at the end of their classroom-controlling ropes. We were filled with the unrestrained excitement of the coming of summer.
My small hometown had one elementary school and one high school. These buildings sat right next to each other, with a common gymnasium in between. For every grade I was in, we always had lunch, followed by recess. When we reached the 7th grade, we could start leaving the school property during recess, just so we were back in time for class to start up again. Of course, some kids who lived in town walked home for lunch; they could leave at lunchtime, even when they were little kids. It was a different time then. Parents didn’t worry about their kids walking alone during the day.
OK, back to the lilacs. Toward the end of the school year, like the last couple of weeks, the lilacs started to bloom. School went into June for us. In 1972, when I would have been a mature 7th grader (as mature as a 7th grader could get, I suppose), my friend and I would walk across the street to a grand and glorious lilac bush. We’d stick our entire faces into the mass of pale purple blossoms and inhale. We’d also hope not to get stung by a bee while in the process.
Those lilacs smelled like more than just pretty flowers to me. They smelled like hope. They smelled like freedom. They smelled like anything was possible.
Because summer was coming, and nothing was better than summer. To put it in the eloquent words of Alice Cooper: “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks.” And, to be honest, I happen to love pencils and books. And I was a pretty cooperative student, so I don’t think I was the recipient of teachers’ dirty looks. But still, there was nothing as wonderful as summer vacation for us kids.
I’d love to be a kid again on the last day of school and feel that feeling.
That end-of-the-school-year feeling made us giddy even through high school when you’re not supposed to ever feel giddy in front of other people. You’re supposed to be so cool and unflappable. And whatever happens, no matter what, do not openly get excited about lilacs blooming! That’s so . . . 7th grade!
I still went to that lilac bush in high school. It was right across the avenue from the elementary school. In fact, here’s an interesting side note: Turns out that the yard that this lilac bush was in was my future husband’s yard! Well, they had moved out and moved to southern Wisconsin before we ever met in our younger years. We met in college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I’ll stop there—that’s a whole other Tuesday letter for you someday.
My friend Linda and I would surreptitiously pick some of the lilac blossoms and bring them back to our lockers, which were side by side in our high school. We thought we’d give our lockers the lovely, fresh scent of lilacs in the last days of the school year. It didn’t work as we’d hoped. I guess the odor of forgotten lunches, pencil lead, and teenage boys overpowered the poor, delicate blossoms.
I only saw those lilacs in St. Paul as we drove north from the airport. They hadn’t yet bloomed way up near Lake Superior, where we were staying, so I didn’t get to stick my face into those heavenly blossoms. Oh well, I can burn a lilac candle and pretend.
It’s the end of the school year where I live. I get jealous of kids this time of year. I know they must be feeling that fabulous schools-almost-out feeling. I want to feel that again. That anticipation that something so much better is coming—
Hope. Freedom. Possibility.
That’s what lilacs smell like to me.
Wishing these things for you this week as well.
Written with love – – – Patti XOXO
PS – – What memories do you have of those last days of school when you were a kid? I’d love to hear them.
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