Mowing

Gin has done  her own study of this, but I find that I  have a little more to say. The odd thing about growing up is the ghosts you run into. I can remember G coming into the house one day—he’d been mowing the lawn, which he now does on a zero turn radius tractor mower (we have about half an acre of grass – not sure you could actually call some of it “lawn”). But we used to mow it (I say “we,” but I don’t mean it) with three good Sears mulching mowers, Dad pushing one, two kids pushing the others.

Gin and K’s Frazz, carrying on tradition.  Note the cool green wellies.  This is a bubble mower.  Supreme.

Mowing was always a bone of discord in those days. Can you have bones of discord? A ligament of discord. It was on a knee-jerk basis: when Guy’s knee jerked, everybody had to drop what they were doing and man the mowers. I know that his heels were sometimes in danger because of this.

But way back, before we’d added the lot next door to the job, before he had minions, Guy mowed the yard all alone, doggedly pushing our adequate but not fancy mower. And then, one day, Cam got his own mower, and was more than willing and ready to mow with his Dad. Sometimes they worked side by side, but sometimes they ran a contrapuntal pattern, moving first away from each other on a diagonal, then towards again, crossing planes.

It was this G came into the house remembering – eyes pretty full – that little ghost.  These manly crossings were Cam’s finest moments. He’d look up, a pause in his fierce concentration, see his father coming, and then raise one comradely hand—two working men, acknowledging each other as they passed.  The picture above is as close as I came to catching that moment.  Not at all close.

But the thing is engraved on my heart.

That solemn face.

It grew up to be a solemn face (sometimes), and they are still two comradely working men, acknowledging each other as they pass—they’re just closer to the same height. And now they both have sons.

When M came along, he, too, had to have a mower. I don’t, to my sorrow, have a shot of him beside his father. I wish I’d taken one. And they didn’t have the same ritual. But they had the same heart, and they still do.

But I think both of the boys would have killed for a mower that made bubbles.

A note for those who might be interested: this is evidently what happens when you save a PS doc as a .png and then upload it to Flickr – interesting, huh?