Very early
one morning in this past week, Miss Maudie and I did a quiet walk in Bogart
Regional Park, one of our favorite places to chase squirrels and dreams and
lizards. A half mile in, we came upon a lilac in bloom. (See above photo, shot
with an iPhone too early in the morning to capture the soft periwinkle color.)
These trees are portals for me. I cannot draw near them or smell their sweet scent without being transported back to 1983….
During the last summer of my marriage (when my husband was off in China and the kids and I felt like we were on a happy, relaxing vacation for two months), I attended a local writers group where I met a gentleman ten years my senior, a published poet and occasional college professor. I often called him "Prof," but will refer to him here as GK. We became casual friends as he shared his poetry and I shared my essays, and we talked about how our circumstances kept us from writing more. His constraint was that he had returned to Chino to live with and care for his dying mother. My constraint was my failing marriage and the anxiety that came with trying to find a way out of it. I was 29. I had never worked outside the home, had no education beyond a high school diploma and one college-level creative writing class. And I would have four kids to support, should I choose to leave.
One hot, humid summer evening while a thunderstorm was rumbling its way through the city, GK showed up at my door.
“I brought a poem,” he stated, by way of introduction. Then he seated himself in my living room and commenced reading William Wordsworth’s “A Few Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey” while I sat on the floor, enthralled. Any avid hiker will understand the inciting depiction of this poem. In it, the poet tells of returning to his birthplace after five years away, only to find the “beauteous forms” of nature—the hills, the trees, the streams, the blooms—are all exactly as he had remembered them. He had left during a time of revolution, a time of political upheaval and turmoil. But upon his return, nature remained static.
I loved it.
“I thought you would appreciate it,” GK said. “You have so much insight….” He went on to gently suggest that I consider studying literature and teaching as a means of supporting myself and my children. “You have so much to share,” he said.
In high school, I had been told that I wasn’t “college material.” But I took this man at his word. Months later, I found the means to separate myself from my husband and upon doing so, I enrolled as a fulltime college student.
The upheaval in my life was monumental, the stress nearly overwhelming. GK called, in the midst of it all, and I told him how I barely slept at night. At the time, he was staying in Cherry Valley, at a large property that overlooked Bogart Regional Park. He invited me to visit, to stay in the guest house and rest for a weekend if I could find a sitter for the kids. I did, then readily accepted—and was so exhausted when I arrived, he took one look at me and suggested I simply lie down and nap in the peace and quiet of the place. When I woke, the little room where I’d slept was filled with a delicious and unfamiliar fragrance. I sat up and discovered on the nightstand a glass jar filled with blossoms.
“They’re lilacs,” GK told me as he brought me a cup of tea. “They grow wild all around here.”
In my second year of college, I was introduced to the work of Walt Whitman. A favorite poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” expresses the poet’s grief at the loss of Abraham Lincoln. The poem always reminded me of GK’s encouragement and care, how with a single poem he had managed to convince me that I had what it took to earn a college degree. In my senior year, I wrote an expository essay on Whitman’s poem, and an English teacher admired my work enough to submit it for Ideas of Order, the literary journal of the university’s humanities department. It was accepted and subsequently published in the journal, a great honor. That accomplishment—for me—is one of my greatest successes as a writer.
I finished my undergrad work in four years, continued a fifth year to earn my teaching credential, and as soon as I began teaching, I began a graduate program in literature, earning my master’s degree two years later.
Amazing what a man can do with a few words and a handful of sweet-smelling flowers.
So when I see lilacs in bloom, I have to stop, as I did this week, Maudie panting at my side, to review the mileposts that marked my path as I moved forward on my journey to becoming the teacher, writer, poet, and, as much as I can be, authentic human that I am today.
With love and gratitude, Prof. You are ever in my heart.
