【金子凼】Iris, Female Writers, Family Histories

Chinese Version
2016-06-25, Friday, cloudy

In my childhood memory, the iris was a very common native flower in my home province of Sichuan. The iris is a purple flower in a triangle shape with simple narrow petals.

After coming to the United States, I saw many types of gorgeous and plump iris flowers, with their petal edges waved beautifully and their petal colors rich and bright. I think these iris flowers are very attractive. While admiring the magical and changing shapes and colors in its unexpected beauty, I felt like I could watch iris flowers one by one for a long time.

A few years ago, because of my like for the iris, I borrowed a movie called “Iris” from the public library. After watching the movie, I knew that Iris Murdoch, a famous British novelist and philosopher, died less than two years after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At that time, my mother was also losing her memory. I felt that my mother’s situation was much better than Iris, who was sent to a nursing home on a cold raining day in the movie, as my mother was well cared in her own home, by my aunt, up until the last day of her life.

When I read the story of Iris on the Internet, I learned that she was a person with a multi-faceted character, unrestrained emotion and advanced behavior. I thought that Murdoch’s “fundamental current of ethical philosophy was not action but rather intention or attitude” was fresh to my ears. I compared the famous British novelist Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) with the famous Chinese novelist Xiao Hong (1911-1942), because they belonged to the same era, although they lived in different cultural environments, and because they shared irregular explorations of life. I thought Xiao Hong’s fate was tragic and Iris Murdoch’s life experience was weird, and I appreciated the former better.

Xiao Hong, a modern Chinese female writer, famous for her mixture of poetry with literature in her novels, like “Hulan River”. I felt that without birth control, she lost two babies, one was adopted at birth and another died 4-day after born is a very sad story.

A picture of my mother stood among bushes of iris flowers, dated from May 1999, awakened my memory of an unforgettable family history of ours, because this picture was one of many photos sent to me by my mother in 1999. At the end of 1998, my mother was very ill and went back to China alone for a surgery, while my father stayed in the United States to help me take care of my newborn son and daughter who just entered primary school. In 1999, my mother often sent me photos of her in parks. Along with the photos, my mother always wrote in the letters: “I’m recovering well after the surgery. I often go for a walk in the park. I asked passer-by to take the pictures for me, so you can see that I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. ” My mother in the photo dated in 1999 recorded the unforgettable years when I enjoyed my parents’ love again after I became a mother. Thanks to my mother for keeping the memories of my family history alive and for retaining the shape of iris in my distant memory: a purple color flower in a triangle shape with simple narrow petals.

The iris led to two famous female writers and an unforgettable family history, which made me I think that my love of flowers is sometimes like a virtual needle with threads stitching seemingly unrelated things together neatly into a unique virtual flower, which is only for the flower lovers to enjoy.

People love flowers, and flowers please people.

Little Episodes

06-30-2021, My brother wrote a detail story about my mother’s surgery back in 1999 in China.

The greatness of human nature. Today, July 1, I wanted to write a paragraph for the party, but I couldn’t write it. I happened to read my sister’s article and I am writing something for my mother, which is also regarded as a memorial of July 1.
In 1998, I was not accepted into Tsinghua’s MBA program. With my parents’ support, I came to Beijing to accompany my son and my wife who was a PhD student in Peking University. We first lived in the slums of Yuanmingyuan. In the daytime, I worked everywhere, and in the evening I went to Peking University to listen to various lectures. I found a job in a construction company as a material purchaser and a site supervisor. Later, I sold mobile phones to earn a living.
 
In October 1998, our new life in Beijing was not settled down yet, My sister told me that our mother was ill in the United States and needed to come back for surgery. Without hesitation, I asked my sister to send my mother back to China. After coming back to China, my mother stayed in the PhD student dormitory of Peking University for a few days, and then she underwent gallstone surgery in Beijing hospital, with help from our friends. On the morning of the operation, HuaChun, my wife, accompanied my mother to the hospital for all the paperwork, sent her to the operating room, and then rushed back to attend her classes in Peking University. On the same day, in the morning, I took a green train from Chifeng back to Beijing, so I could greet my mother after her surgery and take care of her while she stayed in the hospital. A week later, she was discharged from the hospital. Because of the lack of heating conditions in our slum house in Yuanmingyuan, my mother temporarily stayed with my sister in law. Later, she went back to Yuanmingyuan. Since then, my mother had lived with me for almost 20 years until she passed away in 2018. Three generations of my family are Beipiao, we worked together to start our business, with many ups and downs, only ourselves understood the experience. Later, I will gradually write more to share with my family.

1. On May 15, 1999, my mother standing among bushes of iris flowers and her beautiful handwriting on the back of the photo: “The flower garden next to the peony garden.”