Lilacs and Thunderstorms

In the choking dust of Kuwait, I dreamt of lilacs and thunderstorms.

It was the summer of 2003. In my dream, I sat in the passenger side of a car. Someone was driving, but I didn't know, or even care, who it was. I was leaning against the door, on the shimmering edge between sleeping and waking. The window was down, and as the car went around a corner, the smell of blooming lilacs and an impending thunderstorm washed over me. It was so vivid, so real, that it seemed to linger in the air for a few moments after my platoon sergeant's barked order woke me.

The dream came back many times over that year. A year that seemed to get progressively worse; darker, more dangerous. First we had close calls. Then minor injuries. Then major ones. In February, we lost Josh, one of my dearest friends. During the most stressful times, after the very worst days, the dream would come. I loved it for the window of peace it gave me. I hated it for the longing it left in its wake. It seemed impossible, unreachable, and oh, so desirable. When my tour was over, the dream stopped. But it remained in my mind, a symbol of everything wonderful. It felt like a goal, of some sort.

Just over ten years later, I was divorced, remarried, and expecting my fourth child. After a series of events, including multiple armed robberies and a near-fatal shooting within a few blocks of our house, my husband, BJ, and I had been talking about buying an acreage and getting out of town. We had even put in an offer on one, a shocking heap of a foreclosure, sky clearly visible when you looked up from the attic, that somehow still managed to capture our imaginations. Despite offering more than the asking price, we were outbid by someone who was, apparently, even more crazy than we were.

After that, we tried to be a bit more...selective. We made a list of what we wanted: At least 2 acres. Five would be better. On a paved road. At least four bedrooms. Fixer-upper was ok, but we wanted it to be livable at least. It didn't seem to be *that* high of a standard, but months went by, and we saw nothing we liked. It seemed that what we were looking for just wasn't available, not at any price we could hope to afford, anyway. I kept looking.

I had seen one listing several times. A red house with white trim. Just under five acres. The pictures looked amazing. But there were only three bedrooms. And it was over the state line, in Minnesota, which, unlike South Dakota, had a state income tax. And the price told me that no matter what the pictures said, there was something glaringly wrong with it. I had been looking at properties that included two barren, treeless acres and a 15 year old double-wide with pink shag carpeting for that price. Still, one winter day, I decided to drive past it. I plugged the address into the GPS and set out.

When I was directed to turn off of the paved road, onto gravel, I nearly turned around. Not only had BJ been quite adamant that we needed to live on a paved road, it had snowed the night before. The gravel road had been plowed, and recently too, but I wasn't entirely sure I trusted it. Still, the little checkered flag was said to be only two miles away, so I pushed on.

I could see it for nearly a mile. Bright red and stately against the white of the snow, it sat on a hilltop. The paved driveway stretched 400 feet from the road to the double garage. A neat line of evergreens marked out the Eastern side of the property, and a thick, wild looking shelter-belt stood to the North. I had my phone out to call the realtor before I was even close enough to see the sign. The inside proved to be immaculate. It didn't take long for us to agree that our two youngest children could share a room (the oldest was 18 and had no desire to live in the country), that Minnesota taxes weren't all that high, and we could put up with the gravel.

We bought it. I mean, that's the short version. There was all the usual nonsense with banks, mortgages, inspections, a barn that had to be torn down, a broken pipe in the house in town, and the fact that I was trying to pack up and move while dealing with an 11 year old girl who was anxious about changing schools, a wild weasel of a toddler who hated change, and the uncomfortable fact that I was massively pregnant. We spent the last months of that bitterly cold winter enjoying the warmth of the woodstove and struggling to keep the driveway clear with the snowblower that had been perfect in town, but was totally overwhelmed out in the country.

Watching spring come in was amazing. The "glacier" gradually retreated, revealing the true lay of the land. Every day brought some discovery. One day, we noticed there was concrete dish sitting on the surface of the snow...it looked to be some sort of ground level bird feeder. Neat! I thought. Over the next few days, it became clear that it was NOT a ground level feeder. It was, in fact, sitting on a three-foot tall pedestal that had been completely buried. We also discovered that the snow drifts south of the driveway had hidden several small evergreen trees and a rather pretty little rose garden.

There was a small, square garden fenced with a small, wrought iron fence. We joked, in a rather macabre fashion, that it looked like a cemetery. Despite this rather odd appearance, it turned out to be a perennial garden. The day before our daughter, Astrid, was born, it bloomed full of tulips.

In early June, I was puttering around, cleaning the house. Sam, my toddler, was playing with cars. Astrid was napping. The windows were open to catch the ever-present breeze. There were dark clouds on the horizon; that had been a near-daily sight over the last few weeks. Since the kids were occupied, I took a moment to slip outside and pick some flowers to put in our bedroom. Down the hill, through the big evergreens, through the row of hackberry trees. The wind was picking up, the light changing as the clouds came overhead. The final row of shrubs, running the entire length of the property, was all lilac bushes. I could hear the thunder now, and the wind carried the smell of rain, mixing with the riot of lilac blooms.