Free Where Lilacs Still Bloom by Jane Kirkpatrick Page B

Delia as though she were fine china. She did at times look fragile with her tiny waist, which she didn’t get from me with my pickle shape.
    Both girls planned to wear white, another difference from Amelia and I at our weddings where black or lavender was the acceptable color. Neither girl would wear jewelry, and both dresses had sections of lace at the throat that let the skin show peekaboo through. They were going to be beautiful, and the men in their lives knew it.
    Then there was Martha. At eighteen, that girl had already decided to become a teacher. She’d leave soon after the weddings for school in Portland. I tried not to think of the emptiness all my girls moving on would leave behind. Instead, I thought of Martha’s dreams too and had no doubt she’d be a fine teacher if she could keep herself from “di-gress-ions” as she’s prone to stretch out that word.
    Ruth Reed helped us too, a young girl taking piano lessons from Lizzie at the Presbyterian church instead of here—some condition her father placed on her. I was just pleased she had time with Lizzie at the church and was allowed to help me out after school. She was so thankful her father allowed her to attend school in town, and so was I. She was a big-boned girl, the buckets were heavy, and my, we had so many plantings to tend.
    On a May morning, serenaded by goldfinches and robins, we pulled weeds and planted alyssum to line the wood-chipped paths where guests would wander with their punch and the men their ale (carried to the barn) following the Presbyterian service. Roses bloomed in June. I hoped for sweet-smelling daphnes bobbing their blue heads.
    “Let’s be sure we pull the weeds beside the barn,” I told Fritz.
    “Ah, Ma, no one’s going to even look at the barn.”
    “You don’t know these neighbors.” I shook my finger at him. “They have good eyes. And that’s where you men alwaysend up with your brew.” It disgusted me the men drinking, but so long as they didn’t invade my house with liquor, I turned a blind eye to it. After all, my father had been a brewmaster, so I couldn’t very well join the teetotaler society. They smoked there too, but at least I collected the butts and used them for my nicotine tea to poison insects.
    “Let the daisies stand out against that brown barn as the backdrop instead of gangly thistle,” I told Fritz. “Ruthie will be here before long to help water. I’ll be glad when her parents decide to let her stay here. Poor child. It makes quite a trek for her to walk the distance.”
    “She’s a good kid,” Fritz said, and he sounded like an old man, which made me chuckle since Ruthie’s but four years younger than his fifteen years.
    Lizzie and Delia were busy on their knees, pulling weeds in the peonies’ plots. I hoped the blooms would hold from their usual May into later June for the wedding. Laughter rose as the girls chattered, and I was both delighted that they were such good friends and at the same time saddened knowing after next month they’d be gone from this place.
    “Don’t look so sad,” Martha said, coming up beside me.
    “I’m not. Just wistful watching all my charges grow.”
    “The ones with green stems, or the two with purple skirts and aprons?” she teased.
    “All. But this morning, the skirted kind.” With our hoes we walked the wood-chipped paths toward the apple orchard.I heard the distant whistle of the
Mascot
as it steamed down the Lewis. “It’ll be new and different for you with them gone, won’t it, Martha?”
    “Yes,” she said after a pause. “I’ll miss them. But in some ways, they’ve been gone for a long time already, their lives wrapped up in Nell Irving and Fred. All that courting, sitting in the lamplight in the evening on the porch, then telling each other what was said all over again afterward. Don’t say I said this, Mama, but sometimes I think they’re daft they get to giggling so.”
    “It’s love, honey. That’s what makes us laugh