Read by Michael Flamel

The other week I helped my sister move from Paris, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia, from a rural farm to a small white house in the city. Not just any urban house, the one my parents lived in, the one that has stood empty since they died.

My job was to drive a load of Nancy’s things down and put them in Mom and Dad’s old dining room. Nance and her boyfriend would follow a few days later with the rest of the stuff. A simple enough task—even a little brother could handle it.

I rented a monster-sized red Ford pickup and did my share of packing—tables, chairs, boxes, posters-all of which got heaped and tarped in the back of the truck. Of course, Nancy didn’t want to let an inch of front-seat room go to waste, either, so she filled the cab with Christmas wreaths, a little donkey cart planter, and other less-sturdy odds and ends.

That’s how I met Iris. She went in last, in a large blue-and white porcelain pot. A bearded, blue-and-yellow beauty that was tall, graceful, and thin. Not one of the gaudy kinds that look like paint spills in mail-order catalogs, florid dance-hall queens in garish petticoats.

This one was different, strong yet delicate, her three-petals-up-three-petals down pattern both revealing and concealing an inner beauty. Yet as the ride went on, Iris’s loveliness was not what truly impressed me.

The road is America’s mediation room, our civilization’s prayer closet. It’s where our restless, rootless race finally finds a chance to still itself, to be alone, with thoughts and feelings, for miles and miles and miles. And for ten hours, I was in that pickup closet, driving back to the home where Dad and then Mom died.

But I wasn’t depressed or lonely. I couldn’t be. My companion was silent, but she was there. Her presence and peace pervaded the cab like, well, like the scent of a flower. And some of it seeped into me.

I needed it. After I unloaded Nance’s stuff, I spent some time roaming through the old home place. I found some pictures and relived some memories, most warm, some sad, one too tender to share. Then I gave Iris a deep soaking, said goodbye to her and the past, and headed home.

Nancy called to thank me a few days later. But I thanked her instead for giving me, at 65 miles an hour in a rented Ford truck, an experience I’d never had in my own garden. ❖