Grass is always greener

As a kid, I remember begging my father to let me mow the lawn. 

It was a chore that girl children didn’t usually pull from the roster of odd jobs via the blind selection of various length straws. 

My father initially resisted, not because he had any hardwired thoughts about women doing men’s work but because I was small and the machine was heavy and cumbersome. He didn’t want to risk an accident.

A part of me also suspected he enjoyed his weekly routine of swearing at the mower until it started; following it around the yard for the better part of an hour before the sunset on Friday evenings; and finally, celebrating his achievement with the silent company of our dog as he relaxed in a folding chair, drinking in a beer along with the fresh scent of cut grass. 

The year he finally dragged the old Montgomery Ward mower to the curb and ponied up for a cherry red Craftsman self-propelled model was the year he finally let me give lawn mowing a spin.

Of course, I had to read and regurgitate his forty-five-hour dissertation on equipment safety as it pertains to preemptive detritus checks, the correct angle to address various lawn elevations, slopes, and pitches, not to mention a 10-point OSHA level decree on the required clothing, footwear, and ear protection necessary for buzzing around our quarter-acre lot.

“Just close the bar on the handle and pull the …,” he said as he demonstrated. The machine drowned out his voice as it roared to life. Just let the bar go and it will stop the blade.”

When it was my turn to let her rip, he insisted I show him the technique no less than seven times before he parked himself in his chair on the lawn to supervise.

I can’t remember if this annoyed me, though I imagine it did. It was forever etched in my memory along with the great model train tutorial of 1975, wherein he had explained, in no small detail, how to operate the beloved Lionel set of his childhood. It astounded him that we had wandered off to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom when he was finally ready to hand over the transformer.

“I’m ready,” I said as he stepped aside. I pulled the cord and started following the mower trying to match my father’s even lines. Tipping up the front wheels and turning on a dime, as I had seen him do hundreds of times, I plopped it down just shy of the fresh edge each time.

I think of those days often now … as I set out on the riding mower on what seems like the back forty in comparison.

I never matched his lawn barbering skills, though he never mentioned the zigs and zags, or the 

Now that we’ve upgraded our tools, I have taken the job back from my son, who toiled away for tufts of grass I left along the rows like little green orphans. 

years under the electric tether of a non-power assisted push mower (which needed three charges just to get through the front yard.

I never commented on the boy’s wiggly lines, either.

The grass is always a little greener when someone else is mowing.