Lawns
It was about a week into living here at the new place that it suddenly dawned on me that we're responsible for the lawn.
The people next door -- the ones with the flag out front -- were out there manicuring theirs. Husband with the mower, wife with some portable device used for those hard-to-get spots. I guess they sell those over at Home Depot.
The neighborhood consists of nine houses arranged around a cul-de-sac. There's an Indian family, an African-American family, a Chinese family, two mixed-race families (including us), two white families, and two invisible families. Cars in the driveway, kids' playhouse out back, Weber on the deck, but you never see them. Eerie. The two white families both feel the need for visible proof of American citizenship, i.e., the flag. They're also the ones with the blue-ribbon lawns, not a weed in sight.
We'd only just moved in, and already we were bringing down the neighborhood.
In the front, you could see all too easily where the property line was; the lawn had a "step-down" effect. Things were even worse in the back yard: the grass there was knee-high. My brother-in-law showed up with his two kids; his daughter, Laura, rushed to play on the swing set. "Scratchy," she said, in reference to the tall grass. The seesaw, embedded in weeds, wouldn't move back and forth very well. I felt like a chump.
I had to drive over to College Park and hammer out an agreement with my dad, according to which I would borrow his old mower, in return for also mowing my parents' back yard while they're off vacationing. I don't mind the mowing part. It's the fact that they get to have a vacation that bugs me. I don't expect we'll be going on any vacation anywhere until I'm in my forties.
Which isn't all that far away, actually. Oy, life sucks.
I brought the mower back and got to work on the yard, feeling both like I was in high school again, doing the weekend chores, and at the same time like I was horribly aged. Some sort of Rip Van Winkle effect in which I'd woken up from a dream-laden sleep to find myself a suburban dad with a lawn to tend, a home association covenant to observe. Another twelve years or so, I'd be fobbing this task onto our son, who was presently napping upstairs. The grass was incredible; every few feet the old machine sputtered out. I expected sooner or later it would catch on fire.
It didn't, though. The end result wasn't too smooth, but it sufficed. Later, my niece ran out, then instantly back in. "Hey! The grass is short!" she announced. "Did you cut it with scissors?"
11:11:24 AM 
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