In the back yard of the house on Braintree Street, along the right side, we had a small circular bed of plants, breaking up the line of hedges that ate the soccer ball. By luck or design, there was a hand-sized patch of lilies-of-the-valley that grew there. Lilies-of-the-valley are small, delicate plants that look like they were drawn by a small delicate child, with a small delicate pencil. They only grow to about eight inches high, and their necks bend back towards the earth with white bells the size of the fingertip of that child-artist. 

My mother, who is an avid identifier of plants to this day, introduced me to them one day when I was in elementary school. I can see her fingertip supporting the little flower, and my own reaching out to touch it. I know they smell lovely, but in my memory I can just smell growing things: grass and dirt and leaf. 

The lily-of-the-valley is the “official” flower of May. My birth flower. 

At some point when you’re a kid you dive into the zodiac and your birthstone. It must be a part of the practice of forming yourself. Assembling who you are out of not quite spare parts laying around, that people say should fit. An Emerald. A rock you can look at in a book. It’s hard and colorful, things a child can understand. A Gemini. A list of traits you can read in a book. Adaptable, impulsive, outgoing. These are words we try on like Ray-Bans, or Chuck Taylors, or Jams-shorts.  Before you can really explore your own, delicate, squishy, undefinable parts of yourself, you can take pre-made attributes off the rack for fit.

Growing up, that little patch of flowers would return every spring. While occasionally it would be trampled by a chased dog, or errant soccer ball, it mostly grew a few shoots in the shade, for a while. It was a quiet, private, nook. Not hidden, but not commented upon. A little piece of me in the back yard. A little peace in the back yard. 

I am not a believer in the zodiac. I think the list of traits, or a horoscope, are written sufficiently vague as to be self-fulfillingly generic. But I am a believer in my birth flower. Not some associated myth or symbol. I never bothered to read up on that. I believe that I keep a patch of small, delicate flowers nested up under the protection of the hedges.