(Poison) Ivy

Walking the block, you see grand houses beautifully cloaked in ivy. Many decades ago, that house was bare-faced, but slowly adorned itself until only the windows and doors peeked out beneath the greenery. While some houses trained the ivy up with lattice, others grew up naturally, like at our home. Behind the porch, the exterior wall is coated, the ivy’s tentacles reaching up and around my parents’ upstairs bedroom window. But once during one of Mother’s occasional cleaning crazes, she began ripping it down from the siding with gloved hands. Only then I found it out it was poison ivy.