Mother's Day

This year Drew and I agreed to go to the Lilac Festival. For him, a nostalgic ticket to when days were happier, life was gentler - long before cancer or divorce or poverty took its toll. He reminisced repeatedly about fried dough and huge lakes and good times. I knew it was important for him to recapture some of that normalcy we have been missing. So Mother's Day was about being a good mother and doing something for my son.



Not that I don't enjoy the Lilac Festival! It is delightful to wander about, swimming through the heady fragrance of a thousand blooming purple and white lilacs, the air redolent with greasy grilled foods, spilling over with noisy bands, vendors hawking their wares, children crying, mothers yelling. Such a typical fair! You can always find unique crafts, beautiful pictures, extraordinary pottery. Not to mention wandering about outdoors after being cooped up most of the winter.



The day was 65 and breezy, a nice cloud covering preventing glaring sun. I wore my Concordia baseball hat anyways, and urged Drew to get wear his. Drew dislikes crowds, and we picked the banner day for attendance. I truly thought most people would be taking their mothers to dinner at some restaurant, not hauling them about Highland Park in the chill of spring.



Without even talking about it, we both headed where the crowds were less imposing, up the path towards the reservoir, the very hillside where the majority of lilac bushes grew. Drew had brought his camera, and it seemed the thing to do to snap a few pictures. There were so many hues to see, so many different fragrances. It made you downright giddy.



Drew selected a deep purple blossom with a full bodied perfume to begin his photo journal. We worked our way up the hill well off the path, reading the tags on the different bushes, marveling at the sheer magnitude of variety. I had no idea there were so many kinds of lilacs. Drew began seeking the perfect angle, sometimes laying on the ground and pointing his camera up, sometimes standing tall and pointing his camera down. He took distance shots that encompassed whole bushes bending and groaning under their fully loaded branches. He took intimate closeups of single florets. He held a full head of blossom to catch the sun just so. He moved back and forth, mindful of others, seeming to know just what he wanted.



I suddenly realized he was capturing for me a garden full of flowers that I would be able to enjoy for some time to come. I entered the game, asking him to catch button daisies, tulips of every color imaginable, flowering trees of varieties I had never heard of, ancient multi-branched behemoths, even a beaver skulking beneath the underbrush, scared of the unexpected invasion.



It took two full hours to work the little park. We took one short swing through the craft booths, but it was so crowded you couldn't stop to look at anything even if you had wanted to. No matter. I was perfectly happy at walking around outdoors collecting pictures of beautiful flowers and trees. I plan to use a lot of his pictures on the Jairus House website to encourage others. Happy Mother's Day!