The roses might smell great, but the lilacs are gone!

I want to tell you about my garden, but this week way too many bizarre things have happened…

This blog and all of my blogs have sat silent for quite some time.  I understand that as an expiring writer this is like a radio having dead air, however, I found it unavoidable.  There are two main reasons for my delay in writing.  The first is that sometimes life is too hectic, too overwhelming, or too boring to put into print on a public forum such as this blog.  The second and most controlling reason is that this is a public forum and I have decided it is best for my life and the stalkers I have somehow acquired that issues be resolved prior to talking on a public forum.

In this absence, I have had a change of heart.  I once had a dream of an online magazine, but I have come to realize starting an online magazine is in direct contrast with my search for a stress free existence where I can stop and smell the roses.  Let me assure you that from my perspective the roses smell great!

The roses might smell great, but the lilacs are gone! 

I was driving down a two lane road that I travel almost every day.  It is the road that takes me to my home.  It is the road that takes me to my favorite nature place and it is the road that takes me to Walmart, the mall, and most importantly Menard’s.  This well driven pot-holed road also goes past the house my Grandma and Grandpa lived in when I was a child.

When I was a child the entire family gathered at my grandparent’s home often to have potluck and socialize.  I remember macaroni and cheese and I remember my grandma’s brownies.  There was a lot of other food every week.  My family knows how to eat, but I only remember macaroni and cheese and my grandma’s brownies. 

The food was always in the front garage.  That was the garage connected to the house by a closed in porch.  The food was in the garage, the adults were on the porch and the kids were outside.  The house was only used for the restroom. 

Behind the front garage was a second garage separated by blacktop and a basketball hoop.  There was plenty of game of ‘horse’ and ‘pig’ played on that black top and there were many fights over ‘horse’ and ‘pig’ out on that black top too.  The square piece of black top was surrounded by the neighbor’s property line, the two garages and Grandma’s rock garden.  I never saw any rocks bloom in all the years she gardened there.

The only escape was a patch of grass behind the rock garden, past the pine trees and into the back yard.  At the edge of the backyard just past the patch of grass for escaping was a small patch of rhubarb.  Just past the rhubarb was a swing-set with two swings made out of pieces of wood.  They were not comfortable.

Directly behind the second garage and next to the swing-set was a see-saw.  This was the most prized activity in the back yard that stretched out several acres in a narrow path behind the swing-set and see-saw stopping only at the edge of the woods.  I was announcing my age in double digits before I ever ventured into the woods, but that is another story in itself.

Just behind the see-saw was the most mysterious thing at my grandparent’s house.  It was a random patch of cement about three feet wide and six feet long.  It had been on the ground long enough that grass and weeds had invaded its edges and about two thirds up a crack meandered its way across the pavement allowing ant hills and weeds to rise from underneath.

My grandfather use to speak of Harold.  He referred to him as ‘Harold the no skin man.’  According to the legend, told my grandfather, Harold lived in the house attack.  The attack was located up the creaky stairs to the bedroom off of the bedroom where hardly anyone ever went.  Once inside the small bedroom with the low ceiling, one window overlooking the driveway, and two twin beds with red bedspreads you could see the attack door.

It was a door about four feet high and barely three foot wide with no door handle.  It was next to the door entering the room and it was eerie.  Seldom was I in the small bedroom that felt like a dungeon, but never did I open the attack door.  I do not know if Harold was nice or mean, but I knew I did not want to see a man without any skin.

My cousins and I were quite certain this random piece of cement was the grave of Harold the no skin man.  During the day we might place some dandelions on the grave for respect incase his ghost was watching, but once the sky began to get dark it was the grave of a ghost and we wanted nothing to do with it.

Usually, while playing outside the boys went one way and the girls went another.  It was not unheard of for the boys to bother the girls or the girls to bother the boys, but some days the imagination did not allow for these interruptions and my cousin and I would sneak past the rock garden, beside the house, through the huge purple lilac bush and onto the front porch.

The front porch was used even less that the dungeon bedroom.  It was nothing more than a cement slab with cement steps allowing someone to leave the front of the house.  I do not remember ever once using the door at the front of that house. 

Because the front door was located in the dead center of the house another cement slab stretched from the stairs to the drive way that ran next to the house.  On this lower slab sat only a park bench that had been badly neglected and forgotten. 

What made the front porch so cool was that it was completely surrounded by huge eight foot high lilac bushes.  A large purple one on the side and along the front, as a divider between the cement and the road several white bushes.  These bushes were so unkempt and unruly that they over hung the cement porch and even the entrance from the driveway.  I guess my grandma was too busy gardening rocks to trim the bushes, but we were happier because of it.  We had our own nature made hideout and it was cool.

I do not know how many hours we spent on that porch with our imaginations, toys, and the smell of lilacs.  I was thirteen or fourteen when my grandfather passed and barely sixteen when my grandmother moved out of the house leaving Harold behind. 

At first it looked weird to have the wrong car in the driveway. Then, they changed the color from green to blue neither of which look good.  I have watched the small pine trees in front by the turn-around grow large and hide some of the front yard and house from the road.  It has always been an unexplainable emptiness low in my gut when I would look up at the now blue house on the hill as I drove by.  I wish I had been able to give my kids what I got at that house, but times have changed and so many have moved away.  The family is not a close family anymore.  It saddens me and I miss it.

Earlier this week I was driving down that two lane, well driven, pot-holed road with my radio singing to me without a care in the world and I looked up at the now blue house on the hill with the wrong car in the driveway and the huge pine trees out front and literally shouted to my windshield, “The lilacs are gone!”

I want to know who authorized there removal!