I am writing this from a mile high in a small Montana town…(If these words have a familiar ring it’s because Verlyn Klinkenborg started his column Sunday 5/20/07on the op-ed page of the New York Times with the same line, except he was in Wyoming, not Montana.) 

The  first thing I noticed when we landed in Butte last Sunday was bushes and bushes of lilacs, I hadn’t been here in late May for a number of years and had forgotten this sudden bloom of color and fragrance. It seems every house in Montana has a lilac bush blooming in the front yard.  And when we got home to Twin Bridges there was our very own lilac bush blooming by the kitchen door.

The amazing thing, besides the gorgeous pale purple bloom of color and the scent that can break your heart with memory, was that Klinkenborg  (who I have a major writer’s crush on) wrote his piece in the NYT about lilacs.  And in “The Scent of Lilacs” he says it best:  “Here, in the scent of them, I can smell the spareness of a cold climate, the beautiful austerity of a short growing season.  In its own way, a lilac is as pushing, as immodest as anything that grows in Southern California. But when I smell the lilacs, I see a nearly bare yard in a small town and children playing in the weight of their scent, not knowing what it will come to mean to them in time.”

What better coincidence than to read a favorite writer expressing exactly what you’re seeing and thinking and feeling – and at that very same moment.  This happened in Greece last summer when I read the opening of The Three Junes, and whenever I’m in trouble writing I always dip in to Bird by Bird to have some company. If you’ve had a similar experience with reading something that clicks into your life please comment below.

To Do:  Write about the smell of spring when you were little,  Write about flowers you remember.  Begin with the words: I remember…You could start every line with those words or just the beginning.  Go for five minutes and see what you come up with.