Where Lilacs Still Bloom (9 page)

“What? Do you need something? I’m just about to put the dog out in the shed.”

“When you come back in, come right up.” I kept reading, and when Frank arrived, I told him, “He says it’s the perfect flower as it’s simple, modern, inexpensive, easy to grow, and yet has international ancestry. He used Japanese daisies and
English ones and good old American ones that are considered weeds by many. They just grow wild in the meadows. But see here.” I pointed to a drawing included in the Horticultural Society paper. “Look at the size of the bloom. It’s huge, bigger than your palm. And he’ll sell the packets for only ten cents each.”

“We could order them in and have them in the spring. For the girls’ weddings.”

“Of course. They’re getting married next …” I realized there was no date set. They were waiting for me to be better. “Let’s say … June.”

I realized what I’d said and leaned back on the pillow. Weariness returned, but Dr. Alice had been right. What kept me low wasn’t my body, but my mind. I knew my girls were entitled to begin their lives with their husbands, to have what Frank and I had. Luther Burbank’s successes with flowers—not just for food production—inspired me. Even he could see that ornamentals carried as much dignity and usefulness as tomatoes, kale, or corn.

“Good to see you thinking the girls can send the invitations.” Frank undressed for the night. The window was open, and I could hear sandhill cranes making cooing noises in the field between the house and the Lewis River. Soft and settling-in noises.

“It’s time.” I pushed myself up and with his help arranged the pillows so I could continue reading the paper and saw
that Mr. Burbank had written a new book about his efforts and the role of the environment in addition to the natural characteristics of a plant. “Can we spare a dollar for Burbank’s book?” Frank nodded, happy I think that something interested me at last. “Mendel doesn’t hold that the environment has much influence at all,” I said, “but Burbank disagrees. He thinks everything can be changed.” I looked up at Frank. He was smiling. Lizzie and Delia had come in, Martha behind them.

“Your voice; it’s stronger. Are you all right?” Martha asked.

“Not yet, but I will be. Listen.” I patted the bed that the girls might sit. “Burbank thinks how we behave toward plants makes a difference in their growth, their future, their very features. He thinks plants can be convinced to change, that it’s part of their God-given nature. Not something Darwin believed in at all.”

Frank’s eyes shone with tears as he said, “That doesn’t sound very scientific of him.”

“Science isn’t about only university training or conducting research in sterile laboratories or even keeping notes in certain ways so others can replicate your work. That’s not what Mr. Burbank is about, Frank. He’s about … well, here, let me summarize.” I took a deep breath and had enough air. “He wants better fruits and flowers, not just crisper vegetables—and he says that the work of creating better plants will
help people think of nobler efforts in life, bring richer foods to people around the globe, instead of bullets or bayonets. All things are connected. His work touches the soul as well as soil.” My children looked dazed by such scientific words spouting from my mouth after so long a time of tears. “Don’t you see? He knows flowers are important too. He does the Lord’s work.”

“So do you, Mama.” Lizzie patted my hand. “So do you.”

I sighed and sunk back onto the pillow. “And it’s time I got around to do more of it. Just as soon as you girls get married off! I hope June sounds good to you both?”

Lizzie and Delia looked at each other. “That’s perfect,” they said in unison. “Will you be strong enough?” Delia asked.

“I will be.”

That became the promise I made to myself.

B
urbank’s newest work in California made me want to get better—that and the weddings. Then Frank did something I wished my father had been alive to see.

“I sold a couple of cows,” Frank told me in November. Rain poured down the gutters, and the patter on the roof at times drowned out our words. I washed up the evening dishes, the first time in a long time I felt strong enough to stand that long. In the evenings I kept my feet up, quilting, reading, looking at seed catalogs. I couldn’t do much real creating with the same varieties I always had. Crossbreeding demanded new life.

“To cover the wedding expenses next year? Two cows? Well, we can give each of the couples a nice gift to help them get started.”

“I submit, that’s not what I had in mind.”

I looked at him. “What, then?”

“You’re most alive when you’re in that garden of yours. That’s where and how I want to see you. So let’s just say I want to buy them for self-preservation: mine.”

“Buy what? I thought you were selling cows?”

“Those lemon lilacs.”

“Lemoine?” I could barely catch my breath.

“Whatever they’re called.”

“But, Frank.” I sat down at the table, my hands still wet with dishwater. “They’re so expensive and so … I mean breeding them won’t result in better food for someone. They’re … ornamentals.”

“I watch how flowers make you feel. I don’t understand it, but I don’t want to get in the way of it either. So I’ve sold two cows, and we’ll invest in … beauty.”

“I don’t know what to say.” My father had said Frank couldn’t support my efforts, but he was wrong. Maybe Frank wasn’t encouraging my work for the reasons my father would have, to pursue a dream, to meet a challenge; but he was willing to risk with me.

“Just tell me how to find that catalog with the lemons in it. I looked high and low for it. Thought I’d surprise you and order them myself.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t.” I held his face in my soapy hands and kissed him. “Now I have the pleasure of choosing them and anticipating their arrival. Oh, Frank.” I hugged him, kissed him hard. “You are a good, good man.”

“So you say,” he said, then kissed me back.

“How did you even know about it?” I asked my oldest sister, Bertha. She and Carl had come in to town to pick up supplies, and we shared a cup of tea. Later we went out to the flowers and talked as we weeded.

“Frank spoke to Carl about a heifer. So much expense,” Bertha said. “Think what that money could do for the Johnson family or that Smith child or the tailor’s girl who looks like a waif. I can’t believe Frank would let you spend that kind of money. On flowers, for heaven’s sake.”

“You should be happy my husband wants to indulge me so your husband can be indulged. He bought the cows.”

“I don’t know what Carl was thinking. That money has a better place to go. The whole point of having a herd is that you grow it from your own animals.” Bertha plucked a dried leaf from my hair. “The same is true for flowers, or should be.”

“Yes, but occasionally you have to introduce new blood. That’s all I want to do with these lilacs. I still have others I started from the bushes Mama brought with her. I’ll be using them to pollinate with too.”

“But all the way from France! What would Mama think? That you’re getting uppity.”

Uppity?
Mein Gott im Himmel
. This is what my sister thought of me?

I weeded a bit more, then said, “Beauty matters, Bertha;
it does. God gave us flowers for a reason. I think so we’d pay attention to the details of creation and remember to trust Him in all things big or little, no matter what the challenge. Flowers remind us to put away fear, to stop our rushing and running and worrying about this and that, and for a moment have a piece of paradise right here on earth. God offers healing through flowers and brings us closer to Him.”

“Oh, Huldie, really? You think that? It doesn’t sound … Christian at all.”

“When those Johnson young people died in the pond last summer, don’t you think the bouquet of flowers we brought gave some small comfort to their parents? And when I planted tulip bulbs on those young people’s graves after the parents asked, don’t you think imagining those blooms covering their loved ones each spring gives them hope?”

“Maybe. But such expense on frivolous—”

“Living things offer solace, Bertha. I can’t remove the poverty of the Smith children, though I try, I do. Frank and I support the deacon’s fund. But when I brought Mrs. Smith fresh-picked vegetables last summer and included a bouquet of my lilacs, it was the flowers she went to first. She inhaled their scent, and for a moment as she buried her face in them, I think she forgot about the misery of her drinking husband and the rags on her children. She needed that moment to gain strength from those petals to face her life as it is. A moment of joy is no small thing to give another.”

I couldn’t always talk Bertha down, but I seemed to this time. “It’s no different than how you feel about music,” I continued. “A song sung that fills a heart with gratitude or splendor or wonder is as good as food at times. Flowers do that too, and I think it’s worthy work to bring a more unusual flower for others to discover, to somehow weave that special scent into the memories of their living. Why it seems to me when I smell sauerkraut, my mind immediately goes to Mama.”

Bertha laughed. “Mine too.”

“And when I smell a daffodil, I think of Frank and a day he watched flowers consume me. And lilacs remind me of a time he offered to make my metal marking tags. It was his way to be a part of what I love so much. He will always be there with me when I smell a lilac, no matter what might happen to him. And if I die first, then he’ll have the flowers to remind him of what we did together. Or maybe it’s the smell of cows that will remind him of our lives together. I don’t know.” Bertha wiggled her nose and smiled. “I just know that I feel closest to heaven when I’m out here in this garden, and if, as a result, someone finds comfort in what they see or take away, then to me, that’s not an indulgence, it’s a … calling. A passion, Papa called it.”

I felt my face grow warm.

“Papa did?”

I nodded and stood. Bertha and I are the same height, and she nudged me with her shoulder then. “It’s all right. I
shouldn’t have said what I did about the Johnsons and that Lawson girl. I do feel the same about music,” she said. “It’s just that Carl would never pamper me the way Frank does you, and I guess I’m a little, well, jealous.”

“Carl loves you to death.” I put my arm around her waist. “There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I’m afraid to ask, in case he wouldn’t.”

Frank and I settled for seven Lemoine. Seven was really all we could afford of the
Syringa vulgaris
variety. We placed the order, then waited. It’s what a gardener does.

They arrived on board the steamship
Toledo
, a new competition to the
Mascot
that had ruled the Lewis River for years. The cranes warbled in the fields and sunbreaks pierced the clouds that Friday, March 4, 1904. I will never forget it.

I paced, barely able to keep my hands at my sides as Frank picked up the bundle wrapped in burlap and carried it to the wagon. The horse stomped his foot and twisted at the smell, I suspect, earthy and moist and all the way from France. Once home, we slowly removed the burlap as though laying open a treasure recently found. There lay seven spindly lilac stems with a few leaves flattened like winter’s leaves.