The Grass

4.12.16

I grew up behind a push mower. In second grade I was pushing the LawnBoy up what looked like Everest aside our split-level. My Pops told me he thought I was too little to mow it.

Game on.

Little did I know that by proving my 8-year-old affinity for yard clippings I would guarantee myself a life quite yardish. 

I missed the historic dream sequence in which Bobby Ewing dies and returns to life in the shower because I was mowing and we had not yet embraced the 1980s and purchased a VCR that records life-altering moments on "Dallas."

I memorized and executed (beautifully! I might add) Whitney Houston's first album while playing it proudly in my Walkman while I push-push-pushed that mower to "How Will I Know?"  and "Saving All My Love" whilst singing at the top of my pre-adolescent lungs. 

I regularly scalped my Nanny's backyard where the jonquils would grow and bloom too early each spring and die an unmerciful death at the hands of me and the mower. But she squeezed me and loved me to pieces anyway. The yard be damned.

When my brother and I would take to the riding mower at my aunt and uncle's place in Aurora--a treat for the two of us when all we ever wanted to do was DRIVE!--my Uncle Wayne would stand at the end of each row and tell us where to turn. Yes. That happened. That was our childhood good time.

In my adulthood mowing has been a domestic task for which I always enthusiastically volunteered: it was a calorie burn with a clear project-completion-high. When Gracie was too little to govern herself I would trap her in the back of my Explorer and position the back end of the car so she could see me as I mowed while the neighbors walked by, questioning whether to applaud my ingenuity or call the authorities.

Today I find myself with a sizable lawn (half an acre?) and a riding lawn mower. For the first time in my life, I'm not pushing. I'm steering a miniature tractor around a tract of land for which I am solely responsible (also a first). And to add to the wonder of this Patrick Dempsey-esque thrill ride (see "Can't Buy Me Love" classic teen film for details), I have a house that NEEDS TO SELL about 5 blocks away. That yard must be regularly and closely shorn. So now I get to drive my chariot through the neighborhood to the old, unsold monstrosity to keep that yard nice and trim. Then I drive it back. 

That's right: I drive through the streets on a MOWER smiling and waving...or pretending to be engrossed in my phone. And the neighbors wave as I swallow what pride remains in this very-little-embarrasses-me-anymore psyche, guiding my lovely mower from one yard to the next.

Today I mowed my new big ol' yard for the first time beneath a crisp blue spring sky. 

I sang at the top of my lungs.