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The family had just moved to Rhode Island, and the young woman was feeling a little melancholy on that Sunday in May. After all, it was Mother's Day -- and 800 miles separated her from her parents in Ohio. She had called her mother that morning to wish her a happy Mother's Day, and her mother had mentioned how colorful the yard was now that spring had arrived. As they talked, the younger woman could almost smell the tantalizing aroma of purple lilacs hanging on the big bush outside her parents' back door. Later, when she mentioned to her husband how she missed those lilacs, he popped up from his chair. "I know where we can find you all you want," he said. "Get the kids and c'mon." So off they went, driving the country roads of northern Rhode Island on the kind of day only mid－May can produce: sparkling sunshine, unclouded azure skies and vibrant newness of the green growing all around. They went past small villages and burgeoning housing developments, past abandoned apple orchards, back to where trees and brush have devoured old homesteads. Where they stopped，dense thickets of cedars and ju nipers and birch crowded the roadway on both sides. There wasn't a lilac bush in sight. "Come with me," the man said. "Over that hill is an old cellar hole，from somebody's farm of years ago, and there are lilacs all round it. The man who owns this land said I could poke around here anytime. I'm sure he won't mind if we pick a few lilacs." | 
