(This is an essay related to the poem Sunday Servitude posted on the fiction side of this blog).
I started writing Sunday Servitude back in 1990, in the
spring. I remember exactly where the first line came to me. It was a pleasant
spring day. I was reading and drowsing in the sun by the pool of my apartment
complex. It was mid-morning on a workday with no one else around.
The life of Riley, right? That’s what most people assume I
live like even today. Doesn’t every writer? Especially poets, who are a sketchy
lot to begin with?
Well, not quite, at least then. At the time I was working
60+ hours a week in systems integration. Ten hour days in the lab, six days a
week, minimum. This was back when I was still in engineering. At the time, I
was working either second or third shift and had been for six weeks straight.
Not by choice. Because I was single.
So that day I was desperately trying to recharge with a
little down time before I went into work, and succeeding. Right up to the
moment the landscaping crew showed up for their weekly maintenance. I was quite
annoyed at the time, in that frustrated way you only can be with situations
over which you know you have no control. A perfect moment ruined by the noise.
Not enough time to wait it out and get back my Zen.
As they were finishing up, that first line popped into my
head. Like the calls of birds marking out their territory by song. I wrote it
down. A few others followed over time.
More came to me after we’d rented a house a year later. Most
after we’d bought our first house a year after that. This was back when I was
still able to do yard work without my grass allergies trying to kill me.
Growing up, my mother put me on lawn mower duty at 13. At
the time, I wasn’t really big enough or strong enough to get the pull-rope on
our old mower to spark it to life. I remember many a summer afternoon in the
driveway struggling with it to near tears. Not that my mother much cared. The
lawn needed to be mowed. She wasn’t about to do it. My father had been gone for
three years. I was male, so it fell to me.
I was never so grateful as the day a neighbor across the
street took pity on me after watching me for a while. He wandered over and
taught me a few tricks. Things no one had ever told me. Like checking the
sparkplug to make sure it wasn’t fouled, cleaning the air filter was gas (who
knew there was an air filter), checking and filling the oil. Removing the
carburetor and slipping in a little gas to prime the engine. Where to place my
foot for leverage. How to snap-pull the rope. My mother assumed, again because
I was male, that somehow all this knowledge was either inherent or genetic.
Rest assured it wasn’t.
It’s probably no wonder I hated yard work. That hasn’t
changed. But it still took until Karen broke her back just before I left
engineering for us to get a lawn service. Our last mower (which was much easier
to start) strained her back too much after that. Like most chores, we split
yard work. By then, my allergies had gotten worse. While Karen doesn’t have my
aversion to it, it wasn’t her favorite weekly activity. And we have never
looked back. Now anything we do in the yard is because we want to, not because
we have to.
A number of houses in the neighborhood have lawn services
now. Of course, all on different days. One across the street is Tuesday, ours
is Wednesday, another’s is Thursday. I think the thing I dislike most about
lawn maintenance is the noise. I’m an auditory person. Noise like that disrupts
me. At least the professionals tend to be efficient which minimizes it.
Even today, I think that leaf blowers should require an
operator’s license. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched (and listened) to
a neighbor blowing for forty-five minutes to get the very last stuck oak leaf
off their driveway (not an exaggeration). A job that with a push broom would
take fifteen at most. Or started mowing at 7 a.m.
on a weekday or Sunday. The same neighbor who, whenever he saw us in the yard,
would drawl, “I love to see people working.”
Yeah, I am not and never will be one of those individuals
who relaxes by pushing a mower, or gets satisfaction out of the clean line of a
weedwacker or an edger. I don’t get excited by about the machinery, which is
just a tool to me. No different than a word processor, a necessity for the job.
While I love the look of a well manicured lawn, I’m just not the individual
best suited to attain it. I’d much rather read by the pool and dose.
I suspect as summer swings into full force with its blazing
heat and humidity, at least down here, that I’m not the only one.
© 2017 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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This is one of Karen’s favorite poems of mine. Not sure why. Perhaps because it’s more whimsical than most. She insisted that I include it in this year’s offerings.
There are various theories on the origin of the phrase “Life of Riley” as a prosperous life, ranging from a poet named Riley to an Irish family that minted its own money. While I won’t enter into that debate, I do remember that even Star Trek (the original) cleverly alluded to it in “The Naked Time” with Lt. Riley.
When I was young, maybe 5-6, my parents used to help maintain the entrance to our neighborhood, which meant we did it as a family. When we had finished, we would sometimes play in the large, grassy field next to it. I distinctly remember rolling in the grass one day and coming up with my arms spotted and slightly swollen red. Like mosquito bites all over them. But my sister didn’t have any and she had been right out there with me. I never put together what they were until I got tested for allergies twenty-five years later. Grasses (like oaks, bayberry, ragweed and molds) were all maxed out. Especially Bahia which is the variety that grew in our yard.
At least once when she was feeling peckish, my mother locked my sister and me out of the house to do yard work while she went shopping. So perhaps not too surprising that I see that chore as more punishment than reward.
Picture Notes:
ReplyDeleteWe don't have a lot of lawn equipment. We've had a lawn service for about 2 decades. So when we needed something to illustrate this poem, the leaf blower was about all we had. I like the bright red, and orange against the greens. It makes a nice contrast. The black nozzle, with the wind speed printed at the left leads, nicely into the red of the blower's body. Who knew this little guy could produce 215 mph of blowing power.
Funny, same feelings, although I used to really enjoy yardwork, and I do like it when it's done and everything is tidy. But, ugh, now? Our front yard needs major work and I cannot get up the will to care (much). So many other interesting things to do.
ReplyDelete