She Leaves the Grass

We have fewer than ten days of living at this place now. Gradually, I'm leaving visible reminders that we'll no longer be running the show here. I did something similar when I retired from teaching. About six weeks before my last day of school, I started driving to school a minute later each week. It was amazing how much that minute's difference revealed in what was going on in the world beyond our driveway.

I met different cars on the road, driving from town or pulling on to Great Northern Road from Gooby Road. I started seeing kids standing along the road waiting for the school bus when I'd never seen them before. Sometimes I had to wait for a train blocking the tracks, when I'd usually avoided that delay with an earlier departure. Arriving at school, I noticed a more active parking lot with fewer slots to choose from. Inside, the lobby was bustling with kids and more teachers were congregated in the staff room, chatting or preparing for their 8 a.m. classes.

My strategy of breaking with a strictly-established routine allowed the rebel inside me to strike out, albeit somewhat tamely, but the process also gave me a different perspective on how much effect a minute has on a day.

My strategy for preparing to leave this home we've loved for thirty years has involved a day-by-day process of removing visible objects within the house which have given it our personal touch---the photos, wall hangings, horse trophies, knicknacks, etc. The walls are getting more bare by the day, but so far, all that's revealed to me is a need to fill all those damn nail and tack holes.

Outside, I've followed another gradual releasing of my personal touch. That would be my lawn mowing routine. It's been documented a time or two that I love to mow lawn and that I love to continually add to the manicured state of my surroundings. Neighbors have wondered from time to time just how far I was going to extend that lawn along roadside beyond our driveway to the north and to the south. I wondered the same thing because the internal desire to beautify the world pushed me a few feet onward every year.

Well, my mowing operation has decreased gradually over the past couple of weeks. No more do I mow the Coxes' field, which borders our south lawn. No more am I mowing clear out to the pond with the riding mower and the pathway along its shoreline with the push mower. Earlier this month, I quit mowing the trail to Quest Aircraft Co. property and their patch of pasture along our adjoining fenceline.

The grass is growing. It's looking ragged and ugly out out there. Like the obsessive-compulsive souls who can't stand to see a picture leaning ever so slightly off balance, I'm having a difficult time disciplining myself. I like order. I'm obsessed with neatly-mown lawns. I hate what I'm seeing out there---the tall grass, the thistles and that disgusting hawk weed.

I'm so tempted to jump on my Craftsman and mow down the eyesore. But I remain strong. There are other more important things to do when one moves 30 years worth of belongings than to spend almost one full day out of every four maintaining an estate-like setting.

I'm figuring on one more push with the mower before we go north, and I'll probably select another area of grass to leave standing. What has this process revealed to me? What have I learned about the world at this end of my driveway?

I've learned that hundreds of red, orange and yellow hawk weed sprouts have been lying beneath the surface, hating my guts every time I've shave their heads, and those little devils have been secretly waiting for their chance to rise up and put a blight on one more acre of Bonner County. I've also learned that I can't wait for my mower to go to work out there on South Center Valley Road and cause the neighbors to wonder just how far she'll take it down those ditches.

I think I enjoyed my school rebellion much more than my lawn-mowing retreat.