LILACS

Time travels both linearly and cyclically. Linear time has caused me to be 69 years old today. But cyclical time has brought me back to the thirteenth of June, and back to where I was all those many years ago.

When I was born, I gave my mother a hard time. My father was so happy that both my mother and I were well that when he came to visit the next day he brought an entire branch of a blooming lilac bush into the hospital and set it at the foot of her bed. What the nurses had to say about this is unknown. I have always imagined that the same bush, or one of its progeny, is presently growing in our yard, and sure enough, on the thirteenth of June, the lilacs here are in full bloom. I am sure my mother loved them at the foot of her hospital bed.

--Aarne