Iris Love

This past Saturday, April 20, we celebrated our youngest daughter’s birthday. The weather could not have been cooperative or the day more festive, as we marked the beginning of ten days of palindrome dates in April. We’ll again see ten consecutive palindrome dates over the next five years (May 2025, June 2026, July 2027, August 2028 and September 2029) and then, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, not for another century.

Looking back 23 years, although I remember the physically painful and emotionally joyful day, I have stronger memories of the previous day: April 19. I was at work, facing multiple deadlines and working feverishly to get projects finished before my April 27 due date. I was a ticking clock. That morning, April 19, I knew I was in pre-labor and felt so badly during the course of the day that at one point I rolled myself in my office chair down the hallway. I recall taking my older daughters to their after-school dance classes and praying I’d make it home. Just make it through dinner. Just through this stack of laundry.

At work that day, my colleague motivated me to keep going by reminding me that April 19 was the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco. “You don’t want her to share a birthday with such tragic anniversaries!” he counseled.

And so instead she came on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. April 20 is also Hitler’s birthday and, of course, Weed Day. (Clearly, my friend didn’t consider those events).

The fact is that April is known as the month of tragedies. In no particular order: Lincoln’s assassination, the Virginia Tech shooting, the sinking of the Titanic, the Boston Marathon bombing, the fire at Notre Dame, the shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, the start of the Civil War. All these historical calamities occurred within the same five days in April (the 12^th through the 16^th).

Of all the months, it seems unfair that April should bear this blight. It is the month of rebirth, when colors are exploding in gardens around the country.

If there’s wisdom in the incongruity of horrific events and the blooming world, I can’t find it.

But I do know that the burgeoning irises and tulips, the Cherry Blossom trees and redbuds buoy up our individual hearts and lift the collective hearts of grieving families and devastated nations.

On my mind recently is a dear friend whose spouse is transitioning out of this life. And another whose child hovers on the precipice of death. A friend who is fighting cancer and another who is battling her own inner demons. I wonder what the splendor of spring does for them.

Are they even able to see the magnificence around them?

Perhaps, probably, not. And yet the Spring blooms on. The French word for spring is printemps which roughly translates to the first time, as Spring is the traditional start of a year that bears us through humidity and sweltering heat, through crunchy leaves and grey skies, through frigid days that make us wonder if we’ll ever see Spring again.

And then we do. We always do.

Years ago, a friend gave me cuttings from her patch of irises. They didn’t like me the first two years, refusing to bloom. But once they decided my soil felt like home, every year there was a purple explosion. When we moved, I dug up some of the treasures and replanted. Again, they were shell shocked and punished me for a year until they decided the new spot would do just fine. After a few years, it was time for me to divide them, and I had forgotten just how many bags of clippings I passed along until several friends sent me pictures this year.

Iris love. Gotta pass it on.

In the middle of my iris patch, there is one odd white bloom that stands out. Every year, when she surprises me, I think of the duality of the month: the bright cheerful blooms standing shoulder to shoulder with the stark white presence of death and destruction.

Twenty-three years ago, Emmy’s birth—at least in our hearts—negated the horrors that happened on that date years before her. Because of her, for me, April will always be a month of great beauty and joy.

But year after year, as we navigate life’s tragedies, we need the irises to show us the way.

To printemps and the start of something new.