I’ve always had a strained relationship with lawns. They’ve always seemed like something that’s better in theory than reality, because until recently, I’ve never really experienced a decent lawn. Growing up, we had a spotty front yard that invited weeds to fill in the blanks in the spring or simple bare earth. I’m not sure which was worse. Still, it made for a frustrating mowing experience: it’s hard to hold a straight line when the only thing sticking up are a few blades of grass and some dandelion stems. As such, I disliked mowing — the front yard at least. The backyard was decent. No, I just hated mowing: it was too hard to worry about straight lines (I am a bit OCD about that) and keep the power cord out of the way. Indeed: the first lawn mower that I used was our Sears electric mower, a fantastic idea that resulted in extension cords striped with black where I’d run over them. It’s not lie a gas mower running out of fuel, those sputtering, gasping final rotations of the blade that let you know you’d better hurry up if you’re to get to the end of the row before the thing dies. Running over the cord with an electric mower leads to instant silence, and since there was no way I could fix it myself at age twelve or so, it meant the end of mowing until dad returned.
That was a shame, for as I grew older, I came to appreciate the meditative quality of mowing and to enjoy the challenging of maintaining an always-straight line. By the time I was in high school, mowing the lawn was a positive joy, at least in the backyard, where the grass was dense and only thinned as it neared the back property line. Forcing the grass to submit to my will, I’d keep my eye on the front outer wheel, making sure it ran just to the side of the wild, unkempt grass. My best friend (also a fan of mowing) and I came to call such grass “conquerable.” He’d drop me off after school, sticking around for some basketball, then comment as he left: “That’s some really conquerable grass,” he say, almost enviously. I’d do the same when the situation was reversed. We couldn’t hack our way through Amazonian undergrowth, but we could reduce the height of grass by half in a split second.
Now, mowing my own grass in my own yard, grass that I’ve struggled with dethachers and aerators, grass that I’ve spent hours weeding, grass from which I’ve probably thousands of Sweetgum saplings from overly-neglected spiky seed balls, it’s positively Zen-like. The belt for my push-mower’s assistive drive has now broken for the second time, and the struggle only increases the reward. I mow a different pattern almost every time: left to right, front to back, diagonally this way, diagonally that. And no matter how tired I am when I make the final push, no matter how soaked my shirt and cap are, I’m always a little sad to be done.
