Lilacs on My BirthdayBY JOYCE PESEROFF The flowerets look edible before they open,like columns of sugar dots on tiny stripsI bought as a child. Hard to bite the candy without

some paper adhering, as adding machine tape willto large, red numbers. Lilacs are like that: another yearunspools without major accomplishment,

while I question "major" and "accomplishment."And when I find in Costco those clustersof pointillist pastel, I hope they will become

someone else's nostalgia—honorable emotionpropelling Ulysses toward Ithaca, and a womanto set lilacs in her dooryard as her mother did.