This essay originally appeared as “When lilacs last in the dooryard did their best to bloom” on Susan Dugan’s blog on May 3, 2016.
It all started with the lilacs, with leashing up my little dog and heading out into the cinematic glare of Denver’s bipolar weather on a manic, spring upswing to clear my head of a special relationship’s continuing, apparently unrelenting problems that seemed so threatening to him, and, well, me. Temperatures soaring in late April to the mid-70s, Kayleigh–having caught a whiff of something primal in the verdant, bushy grass–pulling on the leash. Sniffing and grunting into the loam as if searching for clues to her ancient, wild heritage as I stood impatiently commanding her to move on with characteristic results. Reminding me that I might add dog training to the many endeavors I’d so enthusiastically pursued with below average results.
As I stood sighing the sigh for which I am justly famous in certain circles, unwilling to yank at her leash and thereby endanger her fragile neck, I noticed the ragged hedge of lilacs that divide our front yard from our neighbor’s turf beginning to bud. A telltale sign that spring really intended to make a break for it, after all. A fragrant blooming that in recent years had barely, but feebly materialized given the severity of extremes in temperature and moisture to which our fair city had succumbed. Courtesy of either climate change or God’s will, depending on the camp in which one’s ego has chosen to reside.
Nonetheless I managed to herd my six-pound canine toward the trees, to bury my face in their foliage as I had done with grave wonder since childhood, my overly dry eyes growing moist at a bouquet of memories distant and near; transported to so many other springs. Suddenly realizing this was the first May since my daughter went to preschool that I had not found myself swept into a whirlwind of events related to her schools, her peers, her peers’ parents, her extracurricular activities and sports teams, end-of-year commemorations, planning and preparations for summer camps and/or family vacations.
That, in fact, last May had proven a grand crescendo of activities related to her graduation from college, our long-planned celebration trip to Hawaii, and her upcoming move to Seattle, where she had taken a job with a large tech company and would soon leave to seek her fortune. I had been obsessed back then as the lilacs struggled to keep their earnest yet ultimately unreliable promises, with making the time we had left together in Colorado as pleasant and intimate as possible. All the while placing my terror of losing my daughter on the most distant back burner of the gigantic professional chef’s stove of my mind on ego with predictable emotional results.
I grappled with grief all of last summer. Before finally–through vigilant willingness to look with our inner teacher despite my disdain for the Course’s answer (in the case of my beloved daughter) that nothing outside us has the power to endow or deny our peace–shifting at last to a right-mindedness that enabled me to actually accept the reality of the true bond between us. That, unlike shifting roles and venues, has never, could never, be broken. (Just like our real bond with our one parent, actually, although I wasn’t up to accepting that reality any time soon.)
Returning from the walk I finally convinced Kayleigh was actually in our joint best interests, aching for my daughter again with renewed ego vigor, my craving for the oxytocin of contact with her at an all-time high, I checked my calendar and texted her three possible dates for a long-weekend visit I had decided to make in June, asking if any of these dates would work. (I had talked with my husband only the night before about the possibility of us both visiting soon but he had other trips to juggle, preferred not to take the time, and encouraged me to go solo.)
I sat down at my computer and began researching possible flights, lodging, and costs, finding what appeared to be the perfect airbnb rental to avoid the outrageous hotel prices in Seattle in June, a cute, clean, safe studio apartment right in my daughter’s neighborhood that was available for the times I had in mind, although solidly booked before and after. Clearly apt to vanish as an option at any moment like everything else here in psycho dreamland. Then I went back to work, to chores, to prepping dinner for my frail father-in-law’s 94th birthday that night, occasionally checking my phone for a response from my daughter that did not materialize.
By the following morning, anxious both to book the apartment as well as take advantage of an airfare sale expiring that day, I texted her again explaining the situation and asking if any of those dates worked, and an hour or so later received an affirmative on one of them, then went ahead and booked my trip, emailing her the confirmations. But as the weekend wore on and she failed to communicate—in “stealth mode,” the term my husband and I had taken to calling her fairly predictable habit of donning her invisibility cloak a la Harry Potter on weekends—my anxiety increased. After all, even when she failed to call or write, she usually at least texted a photo or two of her adorable puppy.
Aware that I had clearly partaken of the ego’s poison but apparently unwilling to mix beverages, I began to fret that my daughter did not want me to visit after all. That I had become one of those overbearing moms, the bumbling cliché I had vowed never to embody, that at this very moment she and her boyfriend were likely rolling their beautiful eyes and discussing over dinner how they might manage to get out of this mess I had thrust them into in my boundary-bashing way. Although I did at last manage to ask our inner professor of sanity’s help as these wanton imaginings continued to morph into far worse scenarios over the next few days, he appeared to have gone missing again, preoccupied perhaps with more sincere Course students than I would ever be.
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, following another night of fretful, sporadic sleep, consumed with worries about the wedge I believed I’d driven between myself and my daughter interspersed with self-condemnation over how difficult I found it to listen to my husband’s continuing emotional unrest without becoming internally unhinged myself, I awoke finally from an already fading sleeping dream. Still nonetheless gripped by the image of Jesus resting a gentle hand on my forehead, smiling and mouthing the words: “separation fever.” The lingering sense that I’d been in mid-conversation with him about how guilty I felt over this bottomless neediness I felt again with my daughter, the sad lavender affair my entire life had become.
And then found myself smiling over a sweet memory of my father standing over me when I was maybe four years old, holding rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball to remove the gum that had mysteriously migrated into my hair again (a not infrequent occurrence). Pretending to read from the back of the bottle that it had been expressly formulated to remove gum from “bad little girls’ hair” in his often humorous way that assured me he did not think I was a bad little girl at all, even though I did (and my mother certainly concurred). That it was all really just silly, gum making its way into children’s hair, not at all sinful. I could relax my shoulders any time I wanted. My father’s message, much like the image of Jesus’ hand on my forehead, rapidly faded as I nonetheless lay in bed absorbing these welcome dreams.
Later that morning as I sat writing at my computer, my husband came downstairs dressed for work and sat on the chair in my office before leaving as he routinely does, proceeding to update me on the latest installment in the ongoing, seemingly impossible situation in his office. But as my anxiety once more rose to meet his, I sensed Jesus standing over me again (this time in stealth mode), hand on my forehead, calmly diagnosing my current bout of separation fever even as my husband continued to relate and animate his story. And my shoulders relaxed from their habitual upright and locked position; enabling me (in ways I couldn’t possibly understand from my office chair) to listen deeply, fully, without judgment, without once becoming that bad little girl again.
Later that afternoon, I took a break from writing and sat with Jesus in my mind’s eye, holding his hand. Gazing out the window at a last hurrah of valiant tulips, the lilacs continuing to slowly open despite the colder weather and predicted snowstorm already moving in. As the fear that my daughter (who still had not contacted me) did not want me to visit once more took root, I quietly struggled anew to resist an overwhelming urge to call her.
“Do you think she could possibly just be busy?” Jesus asked, at last, reading my thoughts again.
And I started to laugh, I mean, really laugh. We laughed our proverbial heads off before finally, jointly, slipping back into a savory silence.
After a while the phone rang and I glanced down at the caller ID. This day really did just keep getting better and better, in a good way. (Although, really, how the hell would I know?)
“Hi sweetie,” I said. “So good to hear from you.”
To his credit, Jesus didn’t laugh, although his eyes were, well, quite merry.
I had a nice long talk with my daughter then. But I did not let go of his hand as we both continued to stare out the window. As the lilacs bravely did their best to bloom.
“Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you make whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he really wants is to offer it unto yourself, for your Father wills you to know your brother as yourself. Answer his call for love, and yours is answered. Healing is the Love of Christ for His Father and for Himself.
Remember what was said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and accept it, their fears vanish. But if they hide their nightmares they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not understand what his perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do understand yours. Little child, you are hiding your head under the cover of the heavy blankets you have laid upon yourself. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own false certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and look at them.
Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for you. Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and Help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the end of strife and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable because it is eternal. The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite your dreams.” (A Course in Miracles Text Chapter 12, II. paragraphs 3-5)
“A little while and you will see me, for I am not hidden because you are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke for you. In my resurrection is your release. Our mission is to escape from crucifixion, not from redemption. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as our Father walked with me. Do you not know that I walked with Him in peace? And does not that mean that peace goes with us on the journey?” (Paragraph 7)
Susan Dugan’s books – Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, and Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness – are available at RMMC and on Amazon. She writes about ACIM based on Ken Wapnick’s teachings at ForaysInForgiveness.com and teaches online via Zoom on Tuesday nights.