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My mother’s garden smelled of lilacs. Sweet and heavy; cloying purple. The smell of summer coming, of bare feet and splinters in my thumbs from teaching myself to do handstands on the back porch. She hated the lilac bushes that grew on the border of her garden but the roots were in the neighbours’ yard and therefore not her domain. In the early summer mornings, she’d walk the perimeter of her garden like an ensign, patrolling for any evidence of lilac infiltration through the iron fencing, trying to push it back, kill it off, cut the buds away. She said the smell was enough to make her sick. I remember her out there one morning in spring, jacket pulled over her head to protect her hair from the rain, feet squelching carefully in the mud around her English roses and bleeding hearts. She had a pair of sewing shears in one hand and she was sticking them through the iron bars, snipping away the lilac blooms that had opened over night, letting them fall to the ground on the other side of the fence. I went out later and worked my thin arms through the fence to rescue the fallen blooms. I shook the mud off and put them in a juice glass; kept them tucked out of sight in my bedroom; reveled in the obscene sweetness. *** Another day, in autumn when lilacs were no longer a concern, she was kneeling in the dirt preparing her rosebushes for winter. The chill was closing in but it was sunny and still hot under the sun. A small trickle of sweat ran between her breasts as she worked, tugged, grappled with dead stalks and tied back the vicious brown stems. She stopped every few minutes and pressed the back of her hand against her sternum to absorb it. She saw me watching her and patted the ground beside her, wanting me to help. Her fingernails were black with dirt – she didn’t believe in gardening gloves – and a piece of her black hair had gotten free from the scarf she’d tied it back with. I reached my hand, small clean fingernails, up to push her hair off her face. She turned her face to me, smiling, green eyed, and pulled off a lush pink bloom that drooped, nearly dead, from the bush she was tying back. She tucked it behind my ear and smoothed my braids down with her dirty hands. In her rusted highland lilt she said, “It’s important for a girl to have a favourite flower. She’ll know a man loves her when he brings her them in winter, no matter what they cost.” She patted my cheek and went back to her roses, no doubt imagining her daughter, all grown and lovely, admired by many men who would bring her pink roses in sentimental courtship. *** My mother’s favourite flowers were the roses, of course. She especially liked pink ones, scentless and pretty, soft to touch, meaning admiration. My father brought her 3 dozens of those roses the day he asked her to marry him. I have never heard the story behind his asking, only that he brought roses and that she knew he loved her because he knew her favourite flower. I always wondered, if he hadn’t brought the roses, would she have accepted? I have been told that my father wasn’t the type to give women flowers before he met my mother. He still isn’t the type, really. I’m sure he never did again. Pink roses are easy to find in the winter. You can buy them at any flower shop. *** Though probably not matching my mother’s vision of me as a woman, courted by serious well-intentioned young men, I have been given flowers on several occasions. Different kinds of flowers from different kinds of men. Usually, the flowers they send reflect something about the men that they are, or the woman they want to believe I am. One sent white lilies. They smelled beautiful, were as pretty as his eyes. And they stained my skin with their deep orange stamen, just like he would mark my body with his teeth during our enthusiastic lovemaking. Another sent daisies that smelled acidic and unwholesome (a little like pee) and completely at odds with their innocent look. He had a wife and a small son and the daisies came with a note saying he would call again when he’d left her, when things would be different. There’ve been vases full of irises, dark and brooding; bouquets of alstra flashy and lacking substance or staying power, even once a bird of paradise that could not be interpreted, a gawdy enigma. And, of course, the roses. The dozens and dozens of them, all the colours of the rainbow, each bundle received pleasantly with a grateful kiss and the right amount of exclaim and you-shouldn’t-haves. *** William’s roses are pink. There are many of them. The small card that comes with them, cradled quietly by fern inside the long box, borne by the smiling delivery man who strode proudly up my path this morning, reads simply “Love William”. Is it a sentiment, a statement or an instruction, I wonder. I have put the card away in the silverware drawer and the roses in a vase on the kitchen table. *** My favourite flowers are lilacs. I don’t like roses, except that they remind me of my mother. Their bobbing heads and traditional statements are the sort of thing I associate with saccharine sentimentalism, the kind that means nothing but looks nice. I’ve noticed that women almost always like roses best. I suspect that’s because women like codes. They enjoy being able to make mountains out of minor things. Roses can be interpreted more officially than any other flower because each colour has already been assigned a meaning by rose enthusiasts, or by Hallmark. Into their roses, these women can read their lover’s intent. “If he sends red roses, that means true love.” “He sent a purple rose. I think I should forgive him.” I, unlike most women, don’t want someone’s true love or apologies lying around for everyone to interpret and touch and envy. *** Lilacs are impossible to find in the winter. They smell strong and sweet and they can’t be bought in the store. They don’t mean anything except what they mean to me.
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