We had some good machines, but they don't work no more.*
Lily-of-the-Valley was my grandmother’s favorite flower.
When we moved into this house, I was thrilled to find a thriving plantation of it around the base of the old lilac tree. (It’s a President Grevy, I’m pretty sure—double blossoms in an incredible blue-tinged dusty lavender, almost periwinkle—and probably over a hundred years old) because of the nostalgia value. They grew all around the slab foundation of my grandparents’ house, and I used to pick them for her when I was little.
With the solipsism of childhood, it never occurred to me that she must have planted them there.
I wish so many things, sometimes. I wish I had had a little more guidance in how to be thoughtful than I ever got as a kid. I wish I had had a little more support on my path to adulthood, so I might have gotten here faster and with fewer detours. (My personal definition of adulthood is “the person who takes a turn doing the chores that have to be done and nobody really wants to do.”)
I wish I’d known how to be more available to my grandmother while she was alive.
But then I think, well, here are these lilies. Tiny and perfect. And maybe when I fumblingly brought them to her, she got it. Because she was the person who did all the jobs nobody else wanted.
We are all descended from a long line of people who did the best they could with the resources available to them… and a few catastrophic fuckups, as well. All we can do is try to improve on what we were handed.
Anyway, I brought a few of the lilies inside, But I left most of them where they grow, sheltered under the lilac tree.
Lilacs, as it happens, are one of my favorite flowers.
So it goes.
from ”Faded Flowers,” by Shriekback