In the Lilac Time of Year

I woke up to the smell of lilacs.

It was so hot yesterday that we had to put the noisy window air conditioners in downstairs, but we didn’t bother with the upstairs. We just opened the windows. By evening, it was cool. I left the big picture window facing the street wide open, and slept in the breeze. It felt like sleeping in a treehouse.

I am still not used to sleeping through the night. For seven years, the stalking neighbor would get up at four in the morning to pace between our houses and rant. It was terrifying to have the windows open in my room at night. I’d have nightmares that she was rappelling up the side of the house to attack me. Now, she’s gone. The house is silent. I slept deeply and didn’t even remember dreaming.

When I woke up, the sun was bright. LaBelle was quiet. Shadows of our doomed trees danced against the wall of the neighbor’s house. The breeze was still blowing, wafting in the perfume from our neglected lilac bush.

I curled up in the quilt like a worm, worrying.

I said the prayer I’ve been saying every morning lately. “God the Father of Mercies, I forgive you for creating me. Please don’t hurt me. God the Son, Redeemer of the World, I forgive you for keeping me alive all these years. I’m sorry I offended you so much. I’m sorry I can’t do what I’m supposed to do. Please don’t hurt me. God the Holy Spirit, I’m so afraid of you I don’t know what to say. Don’t hurt me. If there are any saints or angels listening, please don’t hurt me.” And then I went downstairs.

Adrienne was in her room, sleeping in. She’s become that odd creature known as an adolescent. We stay up far too late at night watching her favorite Twitch streamer review video games together, and then she goes to bed and sleeps until noon. I keep telling her that real brick-and-mortar middle schools aren’t like homeschooling, and she’ll have to turn her sleep-wake cycle around.

Michael was on the sofa where he’d fallen asleep reading again.

Lady McFluff, the portly guinea pig, was wide awake, famished. I brought her her usual dish of salad greens, which she devoured as I gulped my coffee. I couldn’t stand to eat any solid food.

The wiring harness for Serendipity came in a few days ago. It’s still in the hall in the box, where I trip on it. Jimmy is putting tires on his own new-used car, and then he’ll get to ours on the next sunny day. Maybe today, maybe this weekend. In the meanwhile we have the borrowed car, whose brakes sound like a freight train. Every time I come to a stop sign, it feels like the wheels will pop right off. I only use it for errands around town. When I get Serendipity back, I’ll go for a nice long drive someplace beautiful and take a hike, but right now I get my exercise by walking in the neighborhood. That’s where I went next, out for my mid-morning walk.

I can’t even describe what cognitive dissonance I feel every time I pass the neighbor’s yard and see the bright dandelions. She didn’t tolerate dandelions. She mowed her lawn twice a week, stimming back and forth for several hours, cursing and muttering the whole time. Now she’s gone. The yard only gets mowed when Jimmy does it for her, every few weeks. Nature has a chance to assert itself. There are cheerful yellow blossoms in her scrubby grass. She lost, and the dandelions won.

Sometimes I can walk past her house without cringing. This morning, I couldn’t.

The blossoming trees are past their peak, giving way to leaves, but the spring flowers are still alive and well. Bees are everywhere. The clover is high and about to blossom.  Everything is alive.

Every time I saw a flower, I’d smile. Every time there was a bee browsing over a flower, I’d greet her. Every time I saw a patch of tall clover growing close to the curb, I’d pick it for a brunch bouquet for the guinea pig.

Every time I saw a tacky lawn statue of Saint Francis or Our Lady of Grace, I’d cringe. Don’t hurt me. I’m sorry I offended you. I’m sorry I can’t do what you want. Don’t hurt me. 

Those statues are legion in the neighborhood. The wealthier end of LaBelle was where the Sword of the Spirit cult used to be headquartered, apparently; the ones who weren’t even allowed to show love to their wives and children according to the cult handbook. The most strait-laced Catholics still live there. They are constantly scrabbling to keep the poor out of “their” part of Steubenville. It’s another reason I’d love to move away.

I wondered, for the thousandth or the ten-thousandth time, what I would have become if it hadn’t been for the Charismatic Renewal. What if I’d learned to call God by another name? Or even the same name, with different associations? What if my family had ended up rubbing shoulders with laid back liberal Catholics? What if instead of Saint Joseph Cathedral, I’d been baptized in the Episcopal church across the street or at the Methodist church near Holly’s house? What if we’d not been taught any religion at all?

Would I still have this firm belief that there must be a God, not because of what my abusers told me but because of what I’ve experienced in my own meditations and my love of nature and my interactions with other people? Would I still have the notion that whatever else I’m wrong about, God wants us to be kind to one another?

Would I somehow have gotten this religious trauma another way? Would I still cringe from mass produced plaster statues and beg God not to hurt me?

I don’t think I would’ve had another panic attack at Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday and felt sick for hours afterward.

I don’t think I would be terrified that I’m going to hell because it’s been a whole year since I was able to force myself into a confessional.

I don’t think I would have moved to Steubenville and lost everything trying to be a good Catholic in a Catholic cult. I would’ve ruined my life differently.

I came home, and took Lady Mcfluff out to the yard. She grazed on more clover while I weeded. I ripped out crabgrass and threw it on the compost heap; then I dug dandelions and wild plantain out of the planters. I’ll have tomatoes, sunflowers and a Three Sister patch in the community garden again this year, but I want to grow something here in the yard as well. I want to learn to like being in my yard again.

The lilac bush is gigantic, big as a tree. The whole yard smelled like Heaven.

The strawberry patch I planted in 2020 is still alive. Strawberries make an excellent ground cover. They send out runners to fill any space, and they come back year after year. You could have a lawn of strawberries, if you wanted to. My strawberries are blossoming, ready to bear fruit. Two years of being unable to spend time in my yard, and they got luxuriant without me.

I also found a patch of red kale at the end of the compost heap. In 2020 I grew a kale plant so big it was practically a tree. It somehow lasted the whole winter without dying off, but I finally yanked it out and threw it in the compost in 2021, when our neighbor kept running out into the yard to harass us every time the door opened. It took root in the compost and kept growing, a tough and fibrous brassica that just wouldn’t die. I thought the terrible cold in December had finally put a stop to it, but here it was again, one living shoot in a pile of dead things.

The thing about life, is that it goes on. It goes on whether you want it to or not, whether it has meaning or not, whether you’re going to hell or not. Spring comes. Dandelions open. Strawberries send out runners. Lilacs give off perfume.

The door slammed and I jumped a mile, but it was only Adrienne.

“I guess you’re going to want me to help with the garden this year?” she said cheerfully.

“I guess so.”

I am not all right, but it’s better than it was.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.