"I will mow it myself,” my seventy-something-year-old stepmom demands. “I'm afraid you'll mow over my sprinklers.”
“Nanny, I’ve mowed the yard at least 10 times,” I say, figuring I’d done the yard about once a year since my adoption reunion with her husband, my birth father, a decade before. My adoptee life post-reunion is in full swing.
“You haven’t mowed that yard 10 times,” she challenges, waving a spatula in the air like she means business.
“OK, well, at least five times then.”
“Well, if you must, but be careful. Watch out for my sprinklers. And that old mower’s got problems. I told Morgan about it. So ask him to help you get it started.”
Maybe Nanny’s forgotten that last summer she’d taught me the drill. “I’ll crank it, while you blow this starter fluid in that hole there,” she’d instructed. “The carburetor?” I’d questioned. “That hole right there,” she’d answered, directing her long opalescent-tipped index finger at the general vicinity of the filter. I’d done as told, and the mower had huffed to life.
So, assuming Nanny thinks I need my nephew Morgan to be the sprayer, which I do, I climb onto the seat glad Nanny has relented, and that I get to pull my weight in preparation for our annual Fourth of July shindig.
“Keep the blade high. Nanny says it’s jacked,” Morgan shouts above the engine as it sputters, gags, and growls to life. How can I mow with the blade set high? I think, daring to lower it down just a bit. And with that, I wave Morgan off and put toward the sprawling sun-speckled lawn. Other than the rows of dead grass from a prior mow waiting to be run over and spread around a bit, the grass doesn’t look too high to me.
I figure my task is mainly to get at the fast-growing weeds and the taller ankle-plaguing growth that had thrived under the now-moved picnic table. Why else would Nanny instruct me to mow but not to lower the blade? I scratch my head but comply. Letting up on the brake, I realize the mower really is in bad shape. Large plumes of smoke billow behind me, and the engine hacks and coughs beneath me.
Morgan and his dad Bart, my half-brother, four years my senior, found through my reunion with our father, had arrived early to help prepare. Bart always arrives with an arsenal of fireworks to light the sky after our big yard party. And he usually acts as cook/pit master, whether it be crawfish, brisket, or this year, a whole pig to roast in the yard. We expect 30-plus people at this year’s Christmas in July party, eight of whom are staying at the house. So, I’m keen to do my part. I’ve prepared to mow before the sun gets too high, and wish I’d had time to ask Nanny about the blades myself, but she’d already headed into town for shopping by the time I think about it.
So, eager to pitch in, I set about the mowing. A wave of frustration rises, as I reacquaint myself with the break, clutch, and gears that a year ago I thought I’d mastered. But today everything is foreign, and I feel my brother’s eyes on me as I putt from under the carport and head toward the yawning lawn.
But where have the red solo cups atop the sprinklers gone? A tiny shiver of panic sets in, I brush it aside and decide my memory will have to do. If I hit one, I’ll just have to pay to fix it. This thought eases the worry the absent cups have added to my task, but I fail to consider the important question of who will be doing the fixing.
Bart is working on prepping the pig in the yard. And as I find my rhythm, I start on the periphery of the property. Despite my challenges, the morning seems idyllic. The cool breeze, the scurry of squirrels up the big tree. Morgan’s girlfriend Ashley and my sister-in-law Marlane sweeping the front and side porch. As I circle the big tree, where only this April we spread Pop’s ashes, I think of how the sight of us still collectively working to make the Fourth happen would have made Pop smile. But, turning to avoid taking a bad angle on the sloping yard, a whopping thud nearly tosses me off the mower.
Uh oh, that wasn’t good. I’m surprised to find the engine hasn’t died or the mower toppled over. A log? I think, likely hidden under that pile of leaves I plowed through. I’m too far out to have hit a sprinkler. And I literally and figuratively put the worry behind me.
I continue tooting along, unaware of the tower of water shooting up behind me. Then circling back, my eyes fall on Bart. He’s laughing and pointing at something across the yard. An “Oh boy, you’re in trouble, Glad it’s not me,” smirk on his face. I follow his finger across the yard to see a holiday catastrophe in the making. No way in hell that is from a sprinkler!
This is the kind of situation Bart and I might have encountered many times had we grown up together. Yes, Pop would have gotten a big kick out of this. This is the stuff he’d hoped would happen after his passing, “An opportunity for his offspring to bond through adversity,” is how he’d have framed it. A great way to ruin a family holiday, I think.
A few months before, Bart and Morgan had worked tirelessly, making numerous trips into town, as they tried to understand and repair the broken buried water lines in the yard and under the house. Would this be another one of those situations? As Bart points and laughs, I’m relieved to see a smile. But I suspect, if he’s pissed he wouldn’t show it. I pray it will be an easy fix, and that the house will have water before Nanny gets home. I don’t want to ruin his vacation or be a pain in his ass either, but sure hope he will save mine.
I watch Bart march into the field, knowing immediately where, and how, to cut-off the water to the house. He inspects the situation, and as I continue to make long passes over the yard, it occurs to me how little I know about the property. Not knowing where the sprinklers are, and not knowing how to begin to turn off the line, or even how to start the mower, are cutting reminders of a time I am not privy to. My history at the ranch only reaches back 10 years. There is so much Pop never had a chance to teach me. There’s only so much you can make up for in 10 years’ time. This is my adoptee life.
I’ll never have access to the 40-odd years Nanny, Pop and Bart shared. He will always know them, and this place, a thousand times better than I will. Again, adoption means always looking from the outside in, no matter the family in question. The heat on my face is not from the sun, and my gut lurches with the thought of the crow I will soon eat. I imagine Nanny’s impending lecture, the I-told-you-so admonishments as soon as she pulls up, and then I catch myself.
This is a simple mistake, a bruised ego. Now once she gets home, you go in there and apologize. It’s never as bad as you think. She is not your mother, she isn’t going to cuss you out or threaten to cancel the whole thing.
I am right.
“Well, these things happen,” says Nanny, unpacking groceries at the counter. “Let’s just hope Bart can fix it.”
I continue apologizing, explaining about the leaves and how I got distracted by the blades being set too high.
“Well, why didn’t you lower them?” asks Nanny, bustling around me to get to the pantry.
“You told Morgan they had to be set high.”
“I told Morgan to tell you to keep the throttle high, not the blades,” she says swirling around to matter-of-factly look me in the eye.
“Well, that does explain all the sputtering and no cutting,” I add.
I return to the mower, raise the throttle, lower the blades, and set back out to redo an hour’s worth of work. I take extra care not to run over sprinklers or break any more water lines. Bart meanwhile continues to work on the pipe, and thankfully, no trips to town ensue.
Eventually, Bart waves me down and I cut the engine. “Turns out you only knocked the cap off,” he says, smiling. “It must not have been glued on well to begin with, which was lucky, ‘cause if it had been, the whole pipe may have busted up.”
That day, the wild turmoil and torment of emotions around my mistake lasted 30 minutes. Being back on the mower, I found the meditative time needed to feel, name, accept, and soothe my emotions. I remembered my first few years at the ranch, when my insecurities would have crumbled under the weight of the shaming voices in my head. My response might have been to drink more than I should, or to march into the bedroom and shut the door, done for the day, too embarrassed to be seen.
But this time the adult me embraced the 12-year-old me, still trying to prove she belonged. The same me that once wrapped Daddy’s Lincoln around a gas pump, trying to get the car closer while my mom was in the store. Like that day, I was only trying to prove my worth. But on this day, the healed part of me swatted these doubts away. That’s shame! Go away. That’s need for approval! Take a hike. That’s fear of rejection. That’s feeling like I don’t belong. These days, the loving adult part of me shows up and self-soothes my panicking child, coaxing her to crawl out from under her rock and hold her head high. I had her back that Fourth and my brother had mine.
I thanked Bart for saving the day and resumed my mowing. A red bird lit on a nearby branch, and I thought of the smirk on Pop’s face. The kick he would have had watching the scene unfold from his perch on the porch. I could see him wince as he watched me heading toward the leaf-covered PVC, and hear his snorting chuckle as the mower plowed over it, almost bucking me off.
Meeting Pop helped coax the scared child hiding inside me into the daylight. He made it safe for my loving adult self to find her way and show up to take care of Patricia when he no longer could. His non-assuming love allowed me to learn how to be present for my insecure child and angry teenage parts, how to hold them, nurture them, and become the woman who could be true to all parts of myself. This is the beauty of learning to look inward for validation, acceptance, and love. It started with Pop convincing me that I deserved the same compassion I so generously give to others, and it continued with him withholding just enough to help me learn to stand on my own two feet. Knowing him gifted me many things, especially the vulnerability to be the day-dreaming, lawn mower-wielding, sometimes distracted, imperfect human being I am.
