Forgiven.

Around five years ago my mom was coming down to visit. She asked me before she left if I wanted some of her Irises, and I said sure... not thinking much more of it. When she got to my house she had a big bag of iris roots that needed to be planted, that she had dug up for me. She sat the bag under the eves of our house telling me to make sure I get them in the ground as soon as I could. They needed earth, they needed water, and if I got them in the ground soon enough the next year they'd bloom.

The weekend passed and so did the weeks afterward. I never touched the irises. It rained on the bag, I looked at them and felt guilty, but not guilty enough to plant them. I walked by them every day and thought, "shit.. I should plant them."... and then kept on walking.

My mom's disease worsened. Life grew crazy. Life grew unbearably hard. Everything was a challenge.. cooking, washing clothes, breathing. Even looking at the crumpled bag was hard. I noticed each each day how it looked worse and worse. I felt helpless and hopeless about everything in my life; the iris roots were no exception.

Finally the bag tore apart. They had been trying to grow inside of it. Some animal ripped the bag and spread the roots around the driveway. Some were chewed on, some were eaten. Some got kicked into the earth, most died. Like baby birds that left the nest too soon, they lay spread drying out and dying on the cement.

Almost every day for the past five years I've felt the most intense shame, sorrow and pain for not planting them. For asking her to dig them up for me when it winded her - asking her to teeter on her knees when it caused her to lose her balance... asking her to find the roots in the brown dirt while she was fighting to see, and doing it all for me.

About two years ago, the year she died, in the middle of the fall, in the bed where they had lain, two small sets of baby iris leaves started to come up from the ground. It was the wrong season. They had no earth over them, they were bare roots in the frozen ground. I cried for what I'd done - the pitiful and struggling irises were never going to make it.

They kept trying. Winter came and they shone green through the snow. Spring came and inch by inch they grew. Never as big as they should grow, never as robust, never producing a bud or flower. Then summer came and when all of the other plants around it wilted and died in the hot sun, they did not.

Little by little, the two lone irises grew. All the next fall.. all the next winter... taller and taller into the spring.

This spring they stood as tall and strong as any iris anywhere. They'd overcome it all. They'd been abandoned, and frozen, scorched and gnawed upon. They'd struggled all their lives and now they stand tall gracing my garden. Deep purple and vibrant yellow, showing no signs of the abuse they'd suffered. I wonder now what it means. I wonder if she's there - I wonder if she saw them grow. I wonder if she had a hand in helping them along. I wonder if she's watching my back, saving my flowers, and telling me it's all okay.

These are the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen.