Looking around the church, I saw members of the congregation smiling and nodding while, using the tree metaphor, the priest compelled us to understand the greatness of God’s love. Watching the congenial haze of spiritual blossoming, I felt my body tense with guilt as I continued to recall myself yelling profanities without hesitation because the lawnmower noise diminished my potty mouth. I frequently end up screaming at the trees because I risk injury trying to go as far into their branches as possible---for if I don’t mow the grass underneath them I’ll surely face a passerby’s harsh judgment. I push the mower forward into the trees, groan, squint, pray, and bend my body back, straining and contorting myself into unnatural poses in order to avoid being skewered. Sometimes I try to lift the branches out of the way and sneak under them—a technique that has nearly caused a shoulder dislocation and evisceration. One day I was so fed up with being poked that I killed the mower engine, marched to the shed, and got my extra-large Fiskars lopper. With grumbles and gritted teeth, I awkwardly snipped/sawed away at branches, some 3+ inches in diameter. I even pulled a large one down and stood on it while I tried severing it from the tree---another precarious maneuver. I’m sure me wielding those clippers like a mad Edward Scissorhands in a pink visor was quite a sight to behold.
Remembering that and other mowing scenes, I felt anger brewing while I
sat in the church pew: “[bleepity, bleep, bleep, bleep] stupid trees!” Fortunately,
I kept that to myself and avoided a verbal outburst during the sermon. By the
time “Peace be with you” rolled around, I managed to shake off the negativity
and shake hands. I smiled too. Guilt set in, and I thought the ridiculous
thought, “I hope the priest sees my tree necklace and knows I understand the
metaphor, the lesson, and the goodness he spoke of even though my mind went to
the dark side during his talk.” I thought that such a recognition might forgive
my lack of attention and tree-murder fantasies. In fact, I do very much love
and appreciate the beauty and majesty of trees---when I
don’t have to mow under them.
 |
| Post North Lawn Fight, Pre- Pink Visor |
The “north lawn” is my summertime nemesis. It’s just the
space on the north side of the house, but I view it as something similar to the
land beyond “the wall.” Sometimes I look at the north lawn, consider mowing it,
shrug, and then just walk away. I tell myself “It’ll be okay until tomorrow or even
a few more days. It’s shady over there so the grass isn’t really that tall.” Or
I start mowing all the other areas on the property and hope I'll eventually conjure enough ambition
and courage for the north-side venture. I start with the easy part, the “south
lawn”—the section with very few trees and obstacles, where I can mow in pretty
straight lines and imagine fancy checkerboard designs like those of some expansive
English manor-house garden. Sticks rarely get in my way and the only things I typically
need to watch out for are baseballs, baseball bats, baseball gloves, and snakes.
Unfortunately the mower blades did gobble up and shoot out two (or four) balls
during a July mowing. It’s amazing how far they travel. Snakes are far less
aerodynamic.
After the south lawn is cut, as I move closer to the
house, the mowing difficulty increases. My route must be more strategic and
less decorative as to avoid careening snakes, balls, sticks and stones into windows.
(There was something of a “glass door” incident a few years ago.) It seems
simple enough, but for some reason, the lawn/bush/tree configuration always forces
me in the wrong direction and the debris field inevitably points towards home. I
end up mowing in reverse far too often---a truly dodgy direction_for me_on a
mower. But I’m improving, and I’ve even refined other skills, especially the “nudge
method.” The technique was developed because
I kept repressing the existence of a turkey-butchering log that sits near the
barn. My brother took a tom’s head there once and there the log (thankfully not
the head) has remained. Every time I mowed, I was surprised by the butcher
block in my path. Eventually, I didn’t bother to get off of the mower to move
it and instead decided to use the machine to push the wood chunk out of the way.
I’ve since perfected this mowing tactic and have used the method frequently--pushing soccer balls, bicycles, large branches, chairs, and even
merry-go-rounds out of my way. Let me be clear, I do not use this technique because
I’m lazy. It’s just that sometimes, after one has picked up 101 sticks, it
makes more sense to push stuff out of the way instead of interrupting the mow
flow. (About that merry-go-round---it’s a push-pull version with tractor seats,
and it’s the highlight of the north lawn. Children love it, but I’ve started to
view it as a tortuous death trap and one heck of a mowing problem because
it weighs a ton—I got the mower stuck on it using the nudge method once.)
When not in strategic
mowing mode or cedar peril, my mind wanders while I’m bouncing around on the
John Deere lawn tractor. The entire process takes me a minimum of 3 hours, so I
have lots of time to ponder random things---schedules, to-do lists,
conversations, memories. Sometimes my daydreaming leads me to the strangest of
places. For example, the last time I mowed, I thought about the movie my son
and I watched a few months ago---The Soccer Nanny. It was
incredibly bizarre. Sure, I should have known it wasn’t going to be your
typical feel-good family film when Traci Lords’ name popped up in the opening
credits, but in the moment, I simply furrowed my brow, thought “something isn’t
right here,” and watched on. Luckily the movie was only strange and not
particularly unsavory---and my son lost complete interest after 15 minutes. I,
on the other hand, was coerced into watching because of the weirdness. Traci
plays a widowed mother of two boys---one ten years old and one teen aged. For
some reason, she needs nanny help for them because she lives on a buffalo ranch
in Kansas. So, her and the boys go to the airport and pick up their Norwegian
(you betcha, he flies in from Norway), soccer-playing nanny named Oddmund. I
expected Oddmund would win the hearts of the boys and their mother by forming
an amazing small-town soccer team from a group of ragtag kids and winning a
tournament against a powerful team of bullies after adverting some small
crisis. However, the movie went in an altogether different direction and
instead involved the ghost of the boys’ cross-dressing father, teen drinking,
accusations of sexual abuse (just because Oddmund was a male nanny), and Mama
Traci falling in love with a doltish PE teacher. The only soccer involved was
Oddmund’s constant soccer ball juggling. I avoided having to try to explain the
lack of actual soccer play and the “complex” situations to my son because he
left the room shortly after Oddmund unpacked and got acquainted with the
buffalo---the lengthy buffalo-feeding-while-soccer ball-juggling scenes were
less than entertaining.
As I crisscrossed the
yard, I attempted to analyze the film’s existence, but before long, my thoughts
drifted to a more appealing dalliance---manny hiring. As I rounded the lilac
bushes, I thought:
I could really use a manny--except I would like one from Sweden, one who resembled Alexander Skarsgaard. Yes, I would pick up Alex from the Sioux Falls airport and drive him back to the farm. He could play soccer, baseball, football, and basketball with my son while I mowed.
I imagined a perfect slow-motion scene of me watching them frolic in the freshly cut grass as I gleefully performed a mowing ballet around the cement cistern covers.
Alex would love it here and he would be more than happy to accept room and board and mulberry pies and ebelskivers (sure, they’re Danish, but he won’t mind) as payment. He would do some chicken chores and help me fix things around the house---maybe he’d even like to throw some straw bales.
As I threw the mower into reverse, I sighed, smiled.
Oh, yes, Alex would make a wonderful manny. How I would enjoy his company, and I could actually get some things done…I could clean out the dreaded toy room [the other thing on my nemesis list]. Grrr…I loathe that toy room! Why, despite my attempts, do all well-organized boxes of teeny-tiny animals, superheroes, cars, and Legos get dumped, thrown, and occasionally dipped in bottles of Gatorade?!
And suddenly, as I approached cedar row, my thoughts abruptly switched from manny-Alex wonder to toy-room angst.
My adrenaline began
to spike. I thought about the toy room and the trees ahead. I zipped under a
cedar, bent back, grabbed a dead branch, and with a fierce battle cry, snapped
the twig. When the twig broke, my train of thought took a detour. The cedar-induced
stress and aggression must have made me a bit emotional because when I started
thinking about the toy room again, I wasn’t frustrated or angry--I was sad. It
struck me---“pretty soon he won’t need a toy room” and before I knew it a
pathetic, little tear dribbled out, and when I wiped it, I smeared dirt, dust,
and lawn refuse all across my face. I began anticipating nostalgia (a recurring
theme lately). I imagined the toys disappearing and playtime being replaced
with sports activities and homework. I thought of how soon he would lose
interest in all those small figurines. I thought of the ending of things and I
proceeded down that mental path as I continued to duck under branches and mow
beneath the cedars.
Leaning
to the left as far as possible to avoid a particularly pokey limb, I squeezed
between the mailbox and a tree. I wiped my face again
and kept thinking too much. I recalled mowing in the same spot last summer when a big, old champagne-colored Crown Victoria pulled up in front of the house. It was windy that day, and I was worried about how I
looked because I was completely covered in yard grit. A tall man got out of the
car and walked towards me. I saw a middle-aged woman in the front seat and an
elderly woman in the back. He introduced himself and told me that he brought
his mother to look at the property. Apparently in the late 1920s, during the
summer months, she would visit her aunt who used to work in the house as a
switchboard operator (the house contained a room designated as the community’s telephone
exchange). The man and his wife helped the woman out of the car, and we began
chatting as we meandered across the yard. The old woman told me how she
loved to come to the farm as a child and that seeing the house now brought back
so many wonderful memories. I imagined what it must have been like here during
that time when the farm and the community was full of hustle, bustle and
promise. The farm had its own creamery, and the little town that surrounded the
place had a harness shop, blacksmith shop, general store, and a Model-T garage.
In the mid-30s, all of that disappeared. I pictured the small, grey-haired,
hunched woman as a little girl sitting in the corner of the small room,
watching her aunt at the switchboard. I imagined her little-girl self running
around the farm.
As I remembered the woman’s visit and continued to zigzag through cedar row, I began anticipating ends again. I imagined that one day my son might drive me here to visit, and I felt the pain of memories that hadn’t even occurred---of all that will become a “had been.” Since we do not own the farm, that day is inevitable, and as an act of preparation, I tried to place myself in that specific future moment. Perhaps I thought if I tried to feel it in the present, I would not feel it as strongly in the future---it would sting less. Then, of course, a few more tears mixed with splinters, grass, and leaf crumbles trickled, making it difficult to negotiate the rest of cedar row.
Well after that
mowing moment, I considered my nostalgia-infused anxiety attacks and all of my
whining about mowing and sticks. I wondered how it all connected--the yard
work, my tendency to mourn what’s not yet gone, the things the priest said
(including my internal cursing), and my daydreams; I tried to determine a
singular lesson. I knew that being appreciative and being present were at the
heart of this thought process, but I wasn’t completely sure that was the point
I was to understand. Wasn’t it too simple? I didn't know how to wrap up this
reflection. I spent the afternoon wrestling with ideas. Then, that evening, it
all seemed to come full circle: God, the universe, and/or my own recognition of
great coincidence, resolutely emphasized the lesson via 80 mph winds. Nature
asserted its dominance—the sky darkened, the wind whipped, branches bent and
snapped. After the fast and furious storm, my son and I tiptoed out onto the
lawn filled with thousands of leafy sticks and several very large tree
extremities. We surveyed the damage and discovered that one of the cedar row
tenants lost its top half. The storm made it very clear for me: be thankful.
We were safe. I still had a home, a yard to mow, and many beautiful trees to
contend with. All of the whining, wishing, wanting, and worrying was pointless
or perhaps just part of the path to truly understanding how extremely fortunate
I am. In that moment, I acknowledged how lucky I am to have a home and such an
amazing space for my son to grow up. It’s strange how easily we can get so hung
up on little annoyances even when we know better---like all those clichés that
we throw around but don’t fully practice in “real” life (“you don’t know what
you’ve got until it’s gone” and “see the forest for the trees” come to mind).
Stress and worry take over and we fail to see the beauty of it all; fears of
what might happen remove all the bliss from what is happening.
A week or so after the storm, I sent my son off to second
grade. It was a tough morning—another end and another beginning. In addition to
navigating that emotion, my coffeemaker broke down before I could get a cup; my phone
screen went dark (not a good thing for an anxious mother who just sent her son
off to an unfamiliar school); I discovered that the university bookstore failed
to order my students’ books for classes set to begin in T-minus 4 days; and I couldn’t
stop obsessing about how devastated my son would be when he found out that I
forgot to sign him up for fall soccer. Thinking of all of these things, I pulled
into my driveway that morning, whining and worrying, feeling defeated and
overwhelmed. And then I noticed something odd: my mailbox was missing. Driving
closer to where it was supposed to be, I realized that it wasn’t actually
missing, it was buried under an enormous tree branch. I saw the little white
mailbox through the leaves, and I started laughing. Okay, okay---yes, God/universe,
I understand!
