As if sensing that the world needed a summer reboot, our Korean lilac decided to throw off this bloom – something it originally did back in May and June. The pool wasn’t open then as it would have usually been, so we missed out on floating by their sweetly-perfumed mass. On the day this was taken, the first day our pool was open this year, I swam over to the bloom, hoisted myself up onto the deck, and brought this flower to my nose. May came flooding back, the hope of the summer season on the cusp and verge, not halfway finished like it is now, but rather than lament what has been, I sink back into the warm water and embrace what is.
Rebooting a summer with a single lilac bloom seems like whimsical, ephemeral enchantment, the stuff of fairies and fables, and maybe that’s precisely the twist and turn of a key that will start the righting of our wayward world. A little pixie dust never hurt anything. A little magic and make-believe, if it works to wrest a wrong from taking hold, can start things anew.
This year needs that.
