Iris Love

For the life of me, I can't remember where I was when I fell in love with irises. 

Could've been Jean and Grover's house down the corner from mine. Jean used one of those old timey washing machines with the wringer instead of a spinner. You could see it on her back patio, and it seemed a little medieval even in the '70s. But there might've been some irises growing nearby. 

Or maybe it was at Mrs. Hart's house down the hill where we'd all four of us girlfriends beg for some sweetener to go with the grapes (her grapes) we'd just squeezed into a couple of Dixie cups.

It might even have been at my very home on Poplar Street, but I swear, I just can't see the place. 

I can only smell it.  And feel the sweet slightly dewy blossoms between my fingers.

It's that smell that takes me back to pig-tailed days running between our friends Kim and Karen's and the woods and, well, Mrs. Hart's. Somewhere in that mix are purple irises tall and fragrant and buzzing with bees. Not scary bees, but the big fat happy ones that seem too heavy to bother with us. The blossoms are springtime fresh and so big-scented. You can't run by them without getting a noseful of their fragrance. You can't jump rope without sniffing them out before you run through school to 12th grade. You can't even decide who goes first on the swing without taking in a big whiff of sweet iris.

Mom grew some some flowers, but they were mostly the kind you bought at the local nursery and put up in pots or window boxes. Impatiens, petunias, geraniums. The only thing I remember coming back year-round was the little cactus with yellow blooms that Dad saved from the trash somewhere in Coeburn. The irises of my childhood are hidden from me, but not that smell.

When I saw these irises blooming in front of the house this week, I grabbed my kitchen shears and marched down the steps to cut a few stems. Only a few though. I have to ensure that there are plenty of blooms left to fill the air with their sweet scent. And then I can sit on my front porch and remember the days when hidden irises were the star of my spring play. 

There is a time to live...

There’s a time to live

And a time to die

There’s a time to laugh

And a time to cry

There’s a time for war

And a time for peace

There’s a hand to hold

In the worst of these

Mom's been gone for more than six months now. And still, all it takes is a snippet of a song, a flash of highway, a chance view of her name on my Favorites list to send me careening back to Nashville to the Cardiac ICU and her bedside.

There’s a time for yes

And a time for no

There’s a time to be angry

And a time to let it go

There is a time to run

And a time to face it

There is love to see you

Through all of this

This morning is was Mandisa on the local Spirit FM. 

He is with you in the ICU

When the doctors don’t know what to do

And it scares you to the core

He is with you

This song was hot back in October. I heard it every day on Fish FM, the Nashville Christian radio station. I'd bet that each day, as I anxiously followed my GPS to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and tiredly drove back to the hotel at night, I heard it. I heard it so often that I'd begun to think it was written for me. 

We may weep for a time

But joy will come in the morning

The morning light

And this morning, a happen-stance hearing on my 10 minute drive to school, tears threatened to spill. If I'd had a good half hour to cry, I might have let them. 

When nothing else is left

And you take your final breath

He is with you

I pulled into the school lot, parked my car - the one Mom had given me a couple of years ago, and said a quick arrow prayer. Father God, thank you. Thank you that Mom is with you. Thank you that you are with me. Amen.