Honeysuckle. Something I haven't smelled in a long time. Not since windows in my mother's kitchen stained amber with distant sunsets, afternoons spent lying out on the deck. My pale arms grew pink against the warm wood. She read to herself, book after book, and I was content to run through the flowers. Such colour.

My mother died last spring.

It's a surprise to me when my son brings home a bouquet of it in his small, still chubby hands. He's been gone an hour, more, and I had started hitting things in fury that I didn't know where he was and couldn't do anything about it. But then he just showed up, you see, blowing in the front door with dirty knees and wind-mussed hair, calling for me, "Mom, mom, mom!"

Then he grew very quiet, smiling a shy, freckled smile for me, and pushed them into my hand. An array of wildflowers haphazardly picked, with bugs crawling through their petals. Asters, daisies, honeysuckle…

"Thank you," was all I could manage. I couldn't scold him for running off without telling me, though I should have. I couldn't even do the proper thing and find a vase for the flowers because I was on my knees in moments, clutching him to me, close and warm and smelling of summer. And I didn't want to let him go, not ever, though I'll have to eventually.

Everyone has to let go, eventually.