Irises

When  I was young we had a beautiful patch of Irises in our back yard.  They grew several layers thick and were the  length of the back side of the house.  Our homes door was on the side.  You could walk up to the main door on the side and just over the fence were irises.  The bugs loved these irises even more then I did.  My favorites were the huge praying mantises.

These large soldiers were constantly at battle with the huge grasshoppers.  Both wanted to dominate the irises.  They would climb out of their green flowery home up the course red brick wall behind the iris patch.  There on the red brick is where I could watch the battles.  I was always rooting for the mantises.  Though I found great joy in the quick strong grass hoppers.  Well, both great joy and great disgust.

The mantises were green, tan and brown, and occasionally almost white and see through.  I tried to name the mantises and keep track of each individual one.  Sometimes it seemed that the red brick wall was a giant game of king of the mountain, the mantis that is the highest wins.  My room was on the second floor, I was delighted when a mantis would climb up high enough to visit me at my window.  I remember one mantis in particular, large and green, that would visit me on a regular basis.

Now as an adult I have trouble sleeping at night.  The reason for these sleep problems can be found in the title of this blog.  Recently as I was trying to fall asleep, I tried to think of something neutral and relaxing.  A task that is very difficult for me.  All my old happy memories are changed now by the knowledge that my father was/ is a perpetrator.  All the symbols of safety, serenity and calmness have a different meaning now.  Thinking of the beach, the mountains, running rivers all tainted symbols.  I had a recent happy memory of planting tulip, daffodil and iris bulbs with my children.  I focused on these bulbs asleep covered over by soil protected from winter.  I thought about the ground warming up, and these bulbs showing their hidden beauty in the spring.  These thoughts were enough to help me fall asleep.

Then I woke with a start.  Because that is what I do, wake often in the night with a start.  It was only my heated blanket on too high.  I tried to calm myself and go to sleep again.  Once again I thought of the bulbs I planted.  This time I focused on the Iris bulbs I planted.  Irises.  But then the dreaded happened.  That symbol was no longer safe or relaxing, that symbol had a bad memory of my father attached to it.  I sat up in bed in frustrated amazement as I remembered how manipulative my father was, even with irises.

My mother loved to garden.  While she occasionally complained of the grasshoppers hiding in her irises, they were never enough of a reason to get rid of the beautiful flowers.  No the irises great offence was not that they housed grasshoppers.  The irises great offence was that they stood in the way of my oldest sisters bedroom window.  They were wide a bushy so my father could not stand very close to the window, they were tall and elegant so they interrupted his view of the inside.  My father stood there at that window and watched my oldest sister dress, undress, sleep.  But the darn irises were in his way.  Sure he complained to my mother that the offense of the irises were the grasshoppers, so that my mother would not suspect his peeping.

I remember my mother digging and digging to get the long established iris bed cleared.  My mother was not happy.  She loved the irises.  Heck, she even loved the praying mantises and the grasshoppers, just like me.  My mother was always a naturalist at heart.  But bulb after bulb was destroyed with her shovel and thrown carelessly into the garbage.  Forgive my over dramatizing.  As a child I viewed the world in a dramatic way.  I hated to see my beloved bed of irises torn up, the home of the wonderful bugs.  I tried to reason with my mother, and begged her to spare some of them.  Maybe even, I asked, we could replant them somewhere else farther from the garden.  But alas the irises fate was doomed, they had to go, all of them.

Now where the irises once stood is a very expose and open window.  A window that has nothing in front of it to protect it.  A window that is easy to see into, and easy to see out of.  A window still covered with a flimsy curtain.  But a beautiful curtain my mother made, I am sure she did not consider the weaknesses of curtains.  When it is light outside the person inside the curtain can easily see all that is outside.  When it is dark outside and the light is on inside a person outside can easily see all that is going on inside.  To this day I change in the dark, even with blinds in my windows.  I do not want someone outside to see me inside changing.