Nostalgia, a Norwegian, and the North Lawn

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!