I was happy to see Florence’s irises unfold in one of our gardens yesterday and I was out there early to catch them in the morning sun. Irises got me thinking and feeling.  I was looking at George O’Keefe’s paintings recently – she loved to paint the Iris – and I remember reading her comments about them. She thought they were the most sensuous of all flowers, she said she was shocked by their sensuality, their mouths opening like the libia, O’Keefe wrote that they were the vaginal flower. I read a few months ago about a Midwestern legislator who was banned from the state assembly for a few days for mentioning “vagina” in a debate about health care. The men in the chamber were shocked and horrified. If you want to see a grown man fold and run, just come up to him and whisper “vagina” in his ear, and he will shriek like a frightened piglet and head for the door.

Vaginas are  not something much written about in our tense and conflicted culture and this, I think, is because our society is still most controlled by men, for whom the very thought of the vagina would be frightening and disturbing.  The vagina is all about intimacy and most men dread intimacy. I wanted to speak up in defense of the vagina, and add my voice to those discriminating people who appreciate its sensuality and special beauty. I love vaginas and am sorry it took me so long to write about them. For some years, they were missing in my life, and I am eternally grateful that is no longer the case. I hope to never be far from a vagina again in my time on this earth, they are the sweet part of life’s garden, the symbol of the loving body.

Men would do much better in their own lives and on behalf of the world if they didn’t ban vaginas from public discourse, but embraced their wonder and spirituality.  Rather than ban vaginas from public life, they ought to be on billboards reminding us what life is really about. When you think about it, the vagina is the purest and most delicate manifestation life and love, it is a portal to sensitivity and to the art of the human consciousness.

I wonder if Florence thought of them that way – she planted them all around her house. I bet she did, even if she didn’t mention it. I doubt Maria will pick the Irises, they are too fragile, they just collapse and wilt. But I hope she does. I can’t imagine anything sweeter or more beautiful or inspiring than seeing an Iris – the vaginal flower – right next to the computer where I work.

So once again, I’m grateful to Florence for inspiring, however indirectly, my own vagina monologue.