Mowing
I love mowing the yard. I love the way it looks when it's finished, but I also love the act of mowing itself. My teenage son should be taking care of this chore, as I did when I was his age, but I'm too selfish. The roar of the mower cuts me off from the world, so you could say that the time I'm protective of is my time away. Sometimes I listen to music while I mow; sometimes I just put the earplugs in, which dulls the roar of the motor and also lets me hear the thud of my own footsteps as I make progress over the couple of hours it takes to finish this.
Yes, I still push a mower. My step-father-in-law gave me a riding mower about four years ago. I used it for two seasons and enjoyed it pretty well, but now it sits rotting under the pines at the back of my lot. I missed the physical exertion of pushing that mower back and forth and back and forth, so last year I went out and bought a new "walk-behind." The "sit-and-mow" hasn't been started since. (When I mowed the yard around the house where I grew up, I always had to push. Once I was off to college, Dad bought himself a rider.)
Maybe next summer I'll make the boy do the mowing, at least for part of the season. I'm sure it'll be as good for him as it was for me. In fact, I'm probably doing him a disservice by not making him get out there and drop sweat all over the yard and share the feeling I get when I look back on a yard well mowed.
I said earlier that mowing cuts me off from the world. It does. And I need that. What a world these days, eh? I'm glad to be cut off from it--the American wars, our President and his embarrassing talk about eating pig in Germany, the Middle East and its perpetual violence and on and on. I once thought we'd be better than this by now--better at being human, better at living together, better at looking toward the future with hope. Maybe it was Star Trek and Captain Kirk that put the idea in my head. I don't know. I've come to believe that to the extent that I thought we'd be better (to that extent, at least), we're becoming worse.
And so I mow, perhaps to cut myself off from this chaotic world and, at the same time, maintain a bit of order in my own.
I can hardly wait until the grass needs me again as much as I need it.
NWT 243.6
Yes, I still push a mower. My step-father-in-law gave me a riding mower about four years ago. I used it for two seasons and enjoyed it pretty well, but now it sits rotting under the pines at the back of my lot. I missed the physical exertion of pushing that mower back and forth and back and forth, so last year I went out and bought a new "walk-behind." The "sit-and-mow" hasn't been started since. (When I mowed the yard around the house where I grew up, I always had to push. Once I was off to college, Dad bought himself a rider.)
Maybe next summer I'll make the boy do the mowing, at least for part of the season. I'm sure it'll be as good for him as it was for me. In fact, I'm probably doing him a disservice by not making him get out there and drop sweat all over the yard and share the feeling I get when I look back on a yard well mowed.
I said earlier that mowing cuts me off from the world. It does. And I need that. What a world these days, eh? I'm glad to be cut off from it--the American wars, our President and his embarrassing talk about eating pig in Germany, the Middle East and its perpetual violence and on and on. I once thought we'd be better than this by now--better at being human, better at living together, better at looking toward the future with hope. Maybe it was Star Trek and Captain Kirk that put the idea in my head. I don't know. I've come to believe that to the extent that I thought we'd be better (to that extent, at least), we're becoming worse.
And so I mow, perhaps to cut myself off from this chaotic world and, at the same time, maintain a bit of order in my own.
I can hardly wait until the grass needs me again as much as I need it.
NWT 243.6
posted by mac | 8:17 AM
1 Comments:
HeeHaa - for mowing
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