When the Lilacs Bloomed

When the Lilacs Bloomed

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

Oh, so where were you when the lilacs bloomed?

 

Were you pushing your children to study hard……study hard……STUDY HARD AND THEN EVEN HARDER!!!—for the final exams that were soon to ensue?

Did they bitch and groan and complain vociferously, pointing out the many consecutive months they had already been forced to attend school?

But it would soon be over–just a matter of weeks, perhaps even days.

While fragrant lilacs bloomed luxuriously on the periphery of your back yard.

 

Were you busily preparing your son or daughter for confirmation, culminating the many hours of preparation they had already poured into this worthy endeavor?

So proud of them, yet sadly heedful too of their ascendance one step closer to adulthood and total independence.

Snapping a surplus of pictures of her as she posed confidently in the chilly early morning mist.

While resplendent lilacs flourished in the near background, creating the perfect backdrop for a pluperfect occasion.

 

Were you busy constructing flower bouquets to deposit on significant others’ graves for an early Memorial Day?

Visiting the hallowed sites of deceased relatives, and then solemnly reciting a litany of prayers for their long-departed souls.

Giving thanks for the loved ones who you felt so incredibly blessed for having graced your life, while silently gushing appreciation also for not having been asked to prematurely join them.

While lilacs blossomed majestically on the lonely fringes of the graveyard.

 

Were you still a pubescent boy growing up on the farm?

Frantically searching verdant pastures and sporadic woodlots for that young heifer that had gone off to calve for the first time.

A healthy length of baling twine protruding from your back pocket, just in case the young bovine needed assistance in delivering her divine cargo.

Heaving a monstrous sigh of relief when you ultimately found this exhausted heifer, a strapping newborn calf energetically sucking from her engorged udder, while hideous pinkish/purplish afterbirth dangled forlornly from her swollen vulvae.

While lilacs blazed a radiant lavender from the tranquil farmstead in the far-off distance.

 

Or were you on the other side of life–tottering off with your cane to attend a granddaughter’s wedding, your ever present pill-pack safely in tow?

Two youngsters so madly in love they couldn’t even wait the few extra weeks until the traditional month of June to formalize their union.

Struggling mightily to enjoy the ceremony, even as your bladder–unfairly compressed by an insanely enlarged prostate–screamed for relief, your hearing aids whined and malfunctioned, and your heart fibrillated wildly like a hummingbird’s wings.

While those omnipresent lilacs flowered in symphony from the straight-as-an-arrow treelines flanking the quaint country church.

 

Oh, so where were you when the lilacs bloomed?

 

During that special, magical time of year……the very heart of May.

When school is winding down and glorious summer is prepping for her grand entrance in a mere matter of weeks.

When last winter has faded into a distant, hazy, repugnant memory, while onrushing summertime seems to stretch forever in the distance.

When love is so prominent in the air as to be nearly palpable, and every park is brimming with youthful doe-eyed couples clutching hands, exchanging amorous glances, and feeling the primal urge to procreate.

When the sun is rising earlier each morning and setting later each evening, and the possibilities immediately before us seem as expansive as those rapidly lengthening days.

When the weather dramatically morphs from the cool, dreary raininess of April into the seductive, intoxicating heat of June, affording a momentary bridge that graciously unifies the two feuding seasons.

When the world stops to catch its breath before plunging headlong into summer, together with the profusion of wretched excesses that accompany it….…and the horizons in every direction a person looks distend on forever and anything and everything seems possible.

 

Oh, so where were you during those few quixotic weeks in the heart of May—when the lilacs bloomed in all their wonderful, iridescent glory?

 

Now it is early June–a trifling few weeks later–and the lilacs no longer bloom.

Their beautiful purple, pink, and white petals have settled into the soil, no longer enriching the surrounding air with their wildly aromatic redolence.

Now the lilac bushes have retreated back into their pedestrian role of drab, utterly forgettable green shrubs—begrudgingly relinquishing their temporary leading man status for the boring character actor they embrace the other fifty weeks of the year.

They are no longer beautiful, they are no longer noteworthy, and they do not elicit affection or emotions of any kind.

They are ordinary—Yes, that’s right–totally ordinary!–and thus do not warrant further remark in this poem.

 

But then again…….so is life now, in this bucolic first week of June.

Summer vacation has begun, so that means Labor Day and the start of another monotonous school year for the young lads and lasses lurks ominously over the not-so-distant horizon.

Confirmation has been over for weeks, and that large cash windfall you fell into as a serendipitous benefit has long since been spent on middling-quality CDs, boring uninspiring movies, and I-tunes cards with ever-shrinking balances.

Memorial Day is only ten days in the rear-view mirror, yet the visceral closeness you felt to your deceased loved ones on that special day has evaporated into the hot summer air, and the cemeteries are now as lonely and desolate as would logically befit a subterranean refuge for rotting human cadavers.

That energetic calf was quickly stripped away from his mother and crammed into a small pen in the back of the barn, then given bland milk replacer from a bucket as a feeble substitute for the succulent colostrum which resided in his mother’s udder immediately after birth.  The uncomprehending cow wailed mournfully outside the barn door for two subsequent days, but her broken heart has since come to pass and she has moved on in life.

 

And the old fella? 

Yeah, yeah, you know…….that old fella who was attending his granddaughter’s wedding against his better judgment?

Well, fate dramatically intervened in his life shortly thereafter too–his superannuated ticker finally succumbed to exhaustion one afternoon and stopped working altogether–and the poor bastard now resides as a new guest in that aforementioned cemetery.  But you’ll be happy to hear the young newlywed couple is jubilant and starry-eyed and thriving, and still fully immersed in that euphoric embryonic stage of matrimony where they’re consummating their marriage vows every night of the week on whatever flat surface might be available to accommodate their hormone-fueled whims.

 

Oh, so where were you when the lilacs bloomed?

 

That transcendent two-week period in the midst of May when all things seem possible.

When the world stops to catch its breath, and the splendiferous beauty and mesmerizing aroma of the humble lilac bush rules the Universe.

It is a wonderful, elegant, and enchanting occasion then—that special time of the year.

 

When the lilacs bloom……..

 

But then one hot, gusty afternoon, the lilac bushes reluctantly dropped their fragrant petals in the face of a strong southerly wind.

June came to us brazenly and suddenly and rudely that day….…and the world packed up and moved on.