Sometimes I wonder if I got Adam Binder right, if I’ve fully forgotten my backwoods roots.

On Saturday I drove Brian out to where I grew up, over the dirt and gravel road, past piles of burning trash and scrub oak logs in the Oklahoma drizzle. There were plenty of trailers, shells of mobile homes.

When we went past the property where my grandparents lived at the top in their pink brick house (we lived in a trailer at the bottom of the slight hill) I saw grandma’s irises still there, gone a bit wild and blooming.

Part of me wishes I’d taken pictures. Part of me wishes I’d stopped and asked whoever lives there now if I could pay them to dig up a few bulbs. No need for either really. That past will always be part of me, and now it will always be a part of Adam and his books.

Besides, I have a few of grandma’s irises planted here in Denver and every year or so I add a few of my own.