A love letter to lilacs and the joys of fleeting pleasure

I grew up with a lilac shrub right outside my bedroom window. Each May, when the breeze hit just right, the scent would trail through the screen.

And how nice that scent was. Light, tender, sweet, sunny, vegetal – even a bit indolic, sharing the same dirty base note found in jasmine and tuberose. The sillage bordered on overwhelming, particularly on humid days when the scent clung to the wet air. It was difficult to believe that such a potent fragrance could emerge from four-petaled florets no larger than the fingernail on my