Mowing the Lawn
It’s the summer of 1997 or 1998, 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. South-ish Florida. I don’t know what you were doing, but I can tell you exactly what I was doing. I was laying in bed, hoping to God I could come up with any excuse to not have to mow the fucking lawn.
Do you know how hot it gets in Florida during the summer? Even Floridians forget every year. It’s in our DNA as a coping mechanism to re-format our memories of the oppressive heat, otherwise why on earth would anyone keep living there? 100 degrees, maybe higher, by 10 a.m. 90% humidity. And I had to mow the fucking lawn.
My brother did it before me, but he got promoted to Weed Wacker as I reluctantly accepted my new responsibility as the primary lawn maintenance worker at the Bigelow house. My dad even bought a fancy new self-propelling lawn mower after my girly biceps proved no match for a standard push mower. I can’t remember if I really couldn’t push it or if I was faking it, in the hope that my blatant femininity would disqualify me from the task. Either way, it didn’t work, and I was going to have to mow the lawn because my dad said so.
Beet red, dripping sweat and exhibiting the nastiest case of Resting Bitch Face before it was even a thing, I powered through my Saturday morning duty fueled by resentment. Other girls did not have to mow the lawn. Why couldn’t I just clean the bathroom? I yearned for that cold and soothing tile floor under my hands and feet. Instead I got freshly-cut grass clippings practically fused to my calves every weekend and a ruined pair of sneakers. After awhile, it became routine, and I got a set of headphones and a portable CD player to make things slightly less miserable. I quit laying in bed and trying to come up with excuses and started to get up earlier when the temperature was 3 degrees below excruciating. And then I got really fucking good at mowing the lawn. I never admitted it, but there was a certain sense of pride that accompanied a perfectly trimmed lawn with no corners cut, the pattern of the mower still fresh on the grass. And then I went away to college, so my dad had to mow the lawn again, after a 10 year hiatus. At least, until I came home for the summer freshman year.
Saturday morning came, and like clockwork I got up to mow the lawn. Nobody asked me to do it. I sat down on the sofa to tie my shoes and my dad came over and sat across from me.
“You’re an grown up now, you know.” he said to me, smirking.
“Huh? What do you mean?” I was genuinely confused. What was he talking about?
“It means you do the things you know you gotta do, even when you don’t want to do them, without bitchin’ or complaining about it.”
I nodded and let out a small chuckle. “Yeah, I guess so.”
And then I went and mowed the fucking lawn.
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