The family had just moved to Rhode Island, and the young woman was feeling a little melancholy on that Sunday in May. After all, it was Mother's Day, and 800 miles separated her from her parents in Ohio.
She had called her mother that morning. Her mother mentioned how colorful the yard was now that spring had arrived. As they talked, the younger woman could almost smell the tantalizing aroma of purple lilacs hanging outside her parents' back door.
Later, she mentioned to her husband how she missed those lilacs. He immediately stood up. "I know where we can find all you want," he said. "Get the kids and come on."
So off they went, driving the country roads on a perfect mid-May day: sparkling sunshine, unclouded azure skies, and the vibrant green of new growth everywhere. They passed villages, new housing developments, and abandoned apple orchards, eventually reaching an area where nature had reclaimed old homesteads.
Where they stopped, dense thickets of cedars, junipers, and birch lined the road. No lilacs were in sight.
"Come with me," the man said. "Over that hill is an old cellar hole from a farm. Lilacs grow all around it. The landowner said I could poke around anytime."
Before they were halfway up the hill, the fragrance of lilacs reached them. The children started running. Soon, their mother ran too, reaching the hilltop first.
There, hidden from the road, stood towering lilac bushes, so laden with huge, cone-shaped flower clusters that they almost bent double. With a smile, the young woman rushed to the nearest bush, buried her face in the blossoms, and drank in the fragrance and the memories.
While her husband examined the cellar hole and explained to the children what the house might have looked like, the woman wandered among the lilacs. Carefully, she chose sprigs here and there, clipping them with her husband's pocket knife. She was in no hurry, relishing each blossom as a rare treasure.
Finally, they returned to the car for the trip home. As the children chattered and her husband drove, the woman sat smiling, surrounded by her flowers, a faraway look in her eyes.
When they were within three miles of home, she suddenly shouted, "Stop the car! Stop right here!"
Her husband slammed on the brakes. Before he could ask why, she was out of the car and hurrying up a nearby grassy slope, lilacs still in her arms. At the top stood a nursing home. On that beautiful spring day, patients were outdoors strolling or sitting on the porch.
The young woman went to the end of the porch, where an elderly patient sat alone in a wheelchair, head bowed, her back to the others. She placed the flowers across the railing into the old woman's lap.
The woman lifted her head and smiled. The two chatted briefly, both aglow with happiness. Then the young woman turned and ran back to her family. As the car pulled away, the woman in the wheelchair waved, clutching the lilacs.
"Mom," the children asked, "who was that? Why did you give her our flowers? Is she somebody's mother?"
The mother said she didn't know the old woman. But it was Mother's Day, and the woman seemed so alone. "Who wouldn't be cheered by flowers?" she said. "Besides, I have all of you, and I still have my mother, even if she is far away. That woman needed those flowers more than I did."
This satisfied the children, but not the husband. The next day, he bought half a dozen young lilac bushes and planted them around their yard. He has added more several times since.
I was that man. The young mother was, and is, my wife. Now, every May, our yard is redolent with lilacs. Every Mother's Day, our children gather purple bouquets. And every year, I remember the smile on that lonely old woman's face, and the kindness that put it there.