Column: Tales from Exit 22

An unexamined life is not worth living.

Either Socrates or my biology teacher said that. Maybe both of them uttered those words. Socrates during a philosophical debate and my teacher as I dissected a crayfish.

I say, “An unexamined lilac is still worth smelling.”

It happens once a year. The scent comes wafting on the breeze and quickly locates every available nose. It causes even the most jaded of souls to sniff the air and say, “Nice.” A blooming lilac is a green light for warm weather. The beauty of a lilac often goes unnoticed because of the short time it blooms. A lilac is an ephemeral floral pulchritude. A gift that keeps on giving for only a short time.

I haven’t seen a bumper sticker reading, “My lilacs smell better than yours,” but I suspect it’s out there.

I wait patiently each year for the aroma of lilac. It doesn’t linger long enough. A late friend, Don Wedge, had more varieties of lilacs growing in his yard than I could count. I loved walking down that hall of lilacs. It made me giddy.

Vince Lombardi may have said, “Winning isn’t everything. There’s that fleeting scent of lilacs, too.”

Lilacs provide a smell that tells winter not to let spring hit it in the rear end on the way out.

I’ll admit that I’m easily impressed. I push a button and the garage door opens. It’s open sesame without needing to say “open sesame.” That is astounding and worthy of wonder. When Bradley, my steadfast rural mail carrier — neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor flat tires stays this courageous courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds, although nice weather tends to slow him down — delivers a letter to me that was sent from Delaware, I am amazed that the missive traveled so far in such a short time for 44 cents. When the phone rings and it’s not a telemarketer, I marvel at that technology.

My people moved to Minnesota in a failed attempt to escape the clutches of the Columbia House Record Club. They had responded to an offer from Columbia House that allowed them to get 12 records for only a penny. Actually, it was $1.86 — .01 for the 12 albums and 1.85 for shipping and handling. Thirteen times a year, they received a mailing from the Columbia House Record Club. The dispatch listed available vinyl and the featured selection. If they wanted the selection, they needed to do nothing. If they didn’t want the highlighted selection, they needed to send back a response card.

They often forgot to mail that response card. They ended up with stacks of Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, and The Monkees albums. Deep inside, we are all collectors. The problem was that my relatives had moved onto 8-track tapes and had no use for the records. They canceled their membership, but the Columbia House Record Club was unforgiving. It hounded my folks into moving to Minnesota. The first thing my relatives did after they got off the cruise ship from Iowa was to build a barn so that they’d have work. The next thing they did was to build a house so that they’d have shade. Then they marked their territory by planting lilacs.

I am thankful for their foresight in planting the lilacs. I didn’t always pay much attention to the lilacs. I mowed around them. I took them for granted until they bloomed. It was as if they had magically appeared like a Louis Armstrong record from the Columbia House Record Club in my mailbox. Sometimes we get what we want without even knowing we wanted it.

Lilacs have so many things going for them. They don’t clash with dandelions. Lilacs make mowing the lawn almost fun. Lilacs make wonderful cut flowers. I’ve used them to decorate the graves of loved ones, including ancestors known to me only through tales.

A smell of warm weather that indicates a spell of warm weather, a lilac is a horseless Paul Revere who proclaims, “The summer is coming.”

The fragrance of a lilac invites meditation. It’s an accessory to a good day.

My love of lilacs is as long as my years. The same lilac bushes have bloomed all my life. Faithful lilacs mark fading homesteads and forgotten dreams. They bring memories of formal dances in the school gym and the perfume counter at the old drugstore. It’s all good.

It’s spring in Minnesota, on its way to summer. Come see us.

Take a whiff. Stay a while.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.