My mother had a lilac bush in the yard of the house I grew up in. It was a gift from her father, a man who died too early in my life for me to have formed any tactile memories of, but a man I am told was consistently brimming with love and pride for his family - and for his young grandson in particular. At my mother’s direction, my grandfather planted this rather gangly shrub smack in the middle of the yard, spanning almost the entire width - from the neighbor’s fence to the side of our garage with just a small pass through on either side. I say it was a gangly shrub because that’s the way it it looked three out of the four seasons through my adolescent eyes - utterly unremarkable. And while my adult sensibilities understand the conventions of having attractive Spring blooming foliage to delineate a separation of spaces between the play area and the garden, my childhood self just yearned for an uninterrupted sports turf, so accordingly the lilac bush often ended up being used (and abused) as a soccer goal.
We moved away from that house as I entered high school, and I would bet that the bush was dug up soon after the new homeowners moved in. If Google Streetview is any indication, the lilacs were replaced with some sort of untamed evergreen monstrosity, a landscape revamp clearly prioritizing privacy over aesthetics.
Still, I remember the lilac blossoms. The seamless gradations from purple to white and back contrasted against the darker green leaves and wood-like stems, the wafts of their floral essence leaving latent impressions on my young mind like a muse in waiting. And as rings true in countless other hazy examples, these obstacles of latchkey childhoods in time become the sweet nourishing fruits of our memories - the influences that determine the soft edges of where our personalities end and who we otherwise may have become. These are indeed the elements of youth we come to be the most nostalgic for.
It is an understatement to say that Lilac Love only brings me back to late Spring twilights catching fireflies, racing time before the streetlights came on. Or shooting soda cans off the neighbor’s fence with cork guns in the high sun July heat, the lilacs having passed their prime and withering to more muted browns. In actuality, it evokes the entire era and the pleasures that came along with it - most of all, from my current perspective, the inherent absence of adult anxieties.
It is in this spirit that smelling Lilac Love, and to a slightly lesser extent it’s Secret Garden Collection sister fragrance Blossom Love, reminded me of a poem that I hadn’t thought about for several years - XIV. Juegas Todos Los Dias (Everyday You Play) by Pablo Neruda. In one of Neruda’s most celebrated works, he lavishes his lover with praise and declarations of unbreakable desire, all the while expressing deep gratitude that, despite his many faults, he is loved and wanted in return. It is an unflinchingly honest and confident profession of the complex array of emotions, traditions, and qualifiers that make up the philosophy of romantic love. A plunge into the depths of vulnerability, one resulting in the realization that - given that this love is true - there is no reason to come up for air.
To me, Lilac Love is the sensory embodiment of this poem. And beneath the nostalgia and romantic notions, it possesses a subtle, yet certainly noticeable, ever-enduring undercurrent of lust. On some level, I could fall for anyone I encounter wearing this. After all, we all want to be with someone who makes us forget we ever had any worries in this world.
In short, look no further for a wearable swoon-worthy statement on desire and it’s relation to trust, as well as all of the early life influences that build up to it. This is the one. Or at least it is for me.
“Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos. / I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees.”
XIV. Juegas Todos Los Dias
Pablo Neruda
