Under the lilacs

My mother loved lilacs and if I could pick a single representation of her in the universe it would be that flower and its heady fragrance. In her garden she had many, however the deep color and smell of this particular variety was her favorite. She owned two, on either side of the walk framing our neighbor’s house across the road. It was in that house that Louisa May Alcott’s father was born. Alcott wrote a book titled Under the Lilacs, and I think of the flower as old fashioned, perhaps because of this connection. Both trees produced an abundance of flowers and one year each grew an offshoot. One I transported to Caryl for her property in Maryland and the other to my neighbor who transplanted it where I view it from my front porch. This is a photograph of it.

I moved back to Connecticut to care for my mom in her final decade. This move had and has been challenging for many reasons. My mother was not nice and in fact she was often mean and hurtful. The saving grace to her attitude, watching her health fail and all that transpired was meeting and marrying Steve. His support, love and humor kept me sane and happy. We moved to our present house to extricate ourselves from the continual harassment we experienced in our old neighborhood. We were happy here and worked diligently to restore the house in order to sell it, after my mom would be gone and Steve would retire. My mom did pass on, but so did Steve. And after settling both estates, I am ready to leave. The house is on the market however there has been no interest. In the last eighteen months it has devalued 60 percent, 25 in the last two months. Yesterday my next-door-neighbor informed me she plans to abandon her house by the end of the month. I am reeling from this information. After Steve passed away I felt anytime I left my house I was walking over a precipice, into a void. But that was a personal perception. I now look at my neighborhood deep in chaos, swirling before me into an economic vortex, while I remain here, in stasis. But the perfume of lilac hits me as I look over my porch railing and see the flower from my mother's garden.