An Iris is Better than Bling

I write women's fiction. I'm not sure why in some circles that's a questionable activity. I can't imagine why I'd be writing men's fiction, for example, or gender neutral fiction. As a woman, I'm interested in our stories. I hope everyone is fascinated by their own story (even the train-wrecky parts), and I think it follows that the stories other women carry around I'd want to hear. And, of course, write.

Paper Women

It doesn't matter to me that the women's stories I tell are from paper women. They're not just words to me. In my imagination, Mara Jane Mulligan in The Do-Over, and Gwen from my next novel Back to U, live just as surely as anyone else I know well and love.

I think of the characters in my stories as beloved cousins who live in another state. We share a deep history, but I don't get to see them very often.

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But what do women's stories have to do with iris and bling? Let me start with the iris because they are coming up all over my yard. My mother's amber colored bearded iris, and the milky purple ones that smell like sugar are in full bloom.

 

 

They are a small part of my inheritance from her. Besides my nose and the million things mothers give to daughters, she gave me many of her stories. I know about her growing up years as an Idaho farm girl, how she met my dad, and how they spent fifty-one years together before her time came.

But there's another iris in my garden, and this came from a woman whose story I never really got to hear. My mother's mother died when I was one, and I know little about her. I didn't inherit her stories, which would have been my first choice, and I didn't inherit any bling, which would have been my third choice (I am not above jewelry, even the cheap kind), but I did inherit her iris and a story that goes along with them….

The Edge of the Foundation

Years ago my mother and one of my sisters were driving through Idaho and stopped by the old farmhouse where my mom grew up. The house had long since been lost to fire, but all around the edge of the foundation, my grandmother's iris still grew strong and lovely. My mother dug up just enough for the women in the family to each get one rhizome. Mine has multiplied to dozens and dozens of blooms I've divided several times and shared with women friends. And every time I enjoy their blossoms in the spring, every time I run into a friend who thanks me for the iris in her own garden, I'm grateful for women's stories because that's exactly how they work too.