The big purple bearded iris have started their annual blooming in my backyard, the ones my mother gave me from her garden, and the same ones she dug from her own mother's garden. Their genesis reminds me of Virginia Woolf's words in A Room of One's Own about thinking back through our mothers if we are women.

My mother, Adeline, was disinclined to give advice, and I got little or none from my three Rhode Island grandmothers, Helen and Persis, and my step-grandmother, Caroline. What did my mother's mother, Persis, learn from her New Hampshire mother? I looked up in a family history the given name of this great-grandmother, whom I had only seen in old black-and-white photographs, and was reminded it was Mary Emelina.

Searching for the names of female ancestors tells me how few of their words of wisdom are passed down from generation to generation. Although we are stamped with genetic memory, it is silent memory.

While working on a memoir, I still use the dictionary that Persis gave me at the age of ten. I re-read the few letters from Adeline and Helen that I managed to save, searching between the lines to learn what they knew. When we try to think back through our mothers, it is often a halting journey, but the blooming of the dark purple iris reminds me to try.