Settling In

I bought a lilac bush and a magnolia tree on Sunday to plant in my yard, living reminders of where I come from and where I've been. When I was growing up, we lived next door to my grandparents; my parents and grandparents had bought a piece of land and divided it into halves and built their houses next door to each other (which, by the way, my parents do not recommend with the benefits of hindsight. But anyway . . .). Between our two houses were a row of rhododendron, a line of dogwoods, and some lilac bushes. I remember the scent of lilacs from the bushes and from the blooms my mother would occasionally cut and bring inside. She always had big bouquets of flowers around--lavish bunches of daffodils and narcissus in the kitchen early in spring, enormous bundles of gladiolias on every non-moving surface through the summer, even showy irises for a day or two at a time, like flashy starlets with short careers. She would give me bouquets to take to my teachers at school, and they were always big, sort of professional-looking bouquets, not like the sad-but-cute three-blooms wrapped in foil that you sometimes see little kids dragging to school. More like FTD.

Then, when I went looking at colleges, I ranked the ones I visited in part based on the beauty of the campuses. In this category, Swarthmore, with gray Gothic stone, stained glass, and rosy-pink magnolias in spring, ranked higher than those with also-acceptable Georgian red brick and autumnal foliage. One other school was very low for a number of reasons, not the least of which were the ultra-modern spaces designed to unsettle and staircases that wound around and then simply--ended, without going anywhere. I kept thinking about Swarthmore, and the view down Magill Walk--standing on the Quaker-simple, gracious steps of Parrish Hall, looking down a long, flower-lined slate path shaded by the arched branches of hundred-year-old oak trees. It wasn't only that view that brought me to Swarthmore, but the view was part of it. Behind the dorm where I lived for my first two years stood a grove of magnolia trees, and for a week or two in the spring, you could stand there and look up and see nothing but pink blossoms.

My little lilac bush and magnolia tree are really only small sticks right now, but I bought them because I want to put down roots, literally. I still can't quite imagine that Washington will contain my whole life (the thought's a little scary), but surely part of it is here, and for that part, I want to be fully and richly connected to this place.