Day 212

Here I sit, in my room, with about twenty hours remaining of my convalescing. It no longer hurts to take in a breath and my nose started leaking late last night, so maybe antibotics do work after all. If there were beer here I'd buy my room mate lots for having to put up with this. I just returned from the necessary, wiping my nose on my open palm, and perhaps touching my plugged-up nose made me think of it, even though I can't breathe very well at the moment, it dawned on me that I was going to miss the blossoming of the lilacs this year. It happens with such regularity at home, once a year, if I remember correctly, that we tend not to even think about it. As much as I like them, too may lilacs are annoying. How many times have we driven down a North Dakota highway in May, windows rolled down, good jazz on the radio, cold bottled lemonade in the drink cup, enjoying a, if not the first, warm sunny day of spring. There's hardly a breath of wind. The leaves are as still as the pond is mirrored. The car takes us past a farmstead, built close to the road. As we approach, we notice that whoever had planted the lilac bushes had done so in such a way that there was a pattern to the colors; purple, yellow, and then white, repeated all around the yard. There's not enough of a wind to move the air, so when you pass by that farmyard it's like driving into a wall of honey, with double sugar, which you kept in the fridge, making it extra think. That's too much lilac for me. That same farmyard, on a different day, when the wind is blowing five or ten miles an hour, with just enough oomph to move the bulk of the smell out of the way; that's the smell I'll miss.