Cutting the grass is a thing of
beauty.
Zen, even.
I
grew up in
Southern Pennsylvania in a house that later on, my
friends mockingly called "The
Plantation"-- It sat in the middle of a 6 acre expanse of lawn dotted with huge hundred-year old poplars, and silver maples. In the summer, the sun would filter through the branches, creating intricate lacy
patterns on the gently rolling
hills. We
lived at the top of the hill, which gradually descended into a coniferous
forest. A few miles past the forest a cookie cutter golf course
subdivision development was springing up, the unhalting march of
progress.
Anyway... my father. My
father was such a man who enjoyed
cutting grass. He woke up
early on
Sunday mornings and could often be observed on our
red Sears riding mower, tracing the
contours and gradients of the land. During the week, he was a
doctor of
Engineering for the
Department of Defense but he seemed to get some sort of
satisfaction out of this
grass cutting ritual.
My
sister was never much of a
grass cutter. But my brother and I inherited this from our father-- we'd get up on Sunday at around 7:00 in the morning, after the
sun had warmed the stones that made up the wall encircling the edge of the
house, but before the oppresive
heat set in.
I first learned how to drive a
stick shift from that tractor. The
clutch was particularly
difficult-- I had to put my entire 12-year-old weight on it to
shift, but damn it, it would shift when I wanted it to. To this day, I can't
drive automatic-- I feel the car unsettlingly shift itself at random places.
There was just
something about the morning in the
summer that still
brings me back home. As I got older, my father would wake us up early to play
tennis, or go
sailing. During my
teenage years, while I still lived on 'The Plantation', it seemed like my parents and I fought constantly and bitterly, but every weekend
morning was
sacred.
I haven't spent a
summer in the
country for two years. Last summer, my
parents came to visit me in my West Village 17th floor
pied a terre, conspicuously without a
balcony (a balcony was 400$ more a month). Though there's no
grass to
cut in
New York it was just like
home again-- my parents up
early trying to make a
semblance of
breakfast with the meagre contents of my
refrigerator, washing the
dishes that I bought at
Crate and Barrell and haven't used since.
Maybe this explains my unhealthy
penchant for the
early morning-- But I wouldn't have given up those
grass cutting years for anything.