Joy Ride

I don’t think there’s ever been a prouder person to have mowed a lawn.

Twenty years ago, my parents moved from my childhood home to a 55+ unit an hour away. They gave us two budded pink fabric upholstered chairs, a pie plate, and a ride-on mower. We had just brought a house with a 0.3 acre yard.

I remember going with my dad to Sears when he first purchased the mower. He price-shopped, open the hoods, talked rpms and gas tank size. He’d worked on motors and taught himself to fix used cars his entire life. Even as a kid, I could tell he knew more than the salesperson by watching the salesperson’s nods. My dad knew stuff. The salesperson knew money. I danced through the aisles of hammers, cutting wheels, and 10W-30 oil jugs.

This was a luxury item for my dad — a step up. There were more fights when there were project deadlines or delayed payments since my dad was a contractor. My parents were not afraid to work. At our old house, where I lived until sixth grade, I would watch my dad push the mower up and down the hill 20 times. Interval training. There was a Japanese maple that he would loop around, twist toward the mailbox, and ramp along the side of the house. Then we moved and the path changed.

I’d do homework and glance out the window. His circles around the house were rhythmic. I couldn’t hear 10 critical seconds of every Sixiousie and the Banshees and The Cure song when he buzzed over the driveway.

Then new neighbors came. Six kids. Their dad, sporting a polo shirt with a raised collar, would smoke a cigar while riding on his mower. The neighborhood was transformed into a golf course. In hindsight, I don’t know if my dad timed it this way, but it was comical when both dads would mow simultaneously. Male bravado buzzed like bees around a nest.

When my dad delivered the lawn mower, it was a gesture rather than a perfunctory measure. Now it was my turn to care for a home. I was eager. Plus, the mower was a status symbol. Sure, we legally owned land. We could take care of it with style. Or so I thought.

After a few weeks of unpacking boxes, I noticed that three trucks would block the cul-de-sac every Thursday at 10am. Monster mowers would rumble and race around the five houses in twenty minutes, then disappear as quickly as they’d arrived. Only the musty scent of onion grass lingered. The mower was a status symbol because it showed we were laborers. My partner was embarrassed, but the mower was as sacred as a Christmas tree ornament to me.

Still, the mower was not for me to drive. I would break it, I was told. For the weeks after weeks that my partner travelled for work, I was told to arrange for the neighborhood service to visit our lawn. In this neighborhood, there were rules for grass length. Property taxes prevailed over propriety, environmental measures, and individuality. I would look at the parked mower through the kitchen window with no one to ride it. Determined and defiant, I tried twice over the years. As a 30-year-old mower, there were tricks to starting it.

But it’s late April now, with pollen lingering on car windows and the hint of summer’s warm winds. Dandelions popped polka dot contrast on spring’s canvas overnight. The service has come and gone this week. My dad stopped by to teach me how to drive the mower tonight.

I leaned into the damp earth to scrape winter’s mud and debris from the blades. I checked the oil and my dad showed me the engine filter. I was surprised when it started right away, but we had to adjust the deck. My dad showed me the trick (note to Future Self two weeks from now: crank the gas, foot on clutch, while turning the engine and then drop the deck.) The engine sputtered, then died. Tried again. Puttputtputtka-ching! Puttputtputtputt. I was moving! I dropped the deck and slid the clutch into third gear. Steady and slow. I held on with two hands. I glanced back to see the carvings: these plush curves of new green, dampened by dew, that somehow formed a labyrinth around the house.

And, as the sun began to seep behind the woods across the street, the wind didn’t blow through my hair like a commercial. But I did take a selfie and I did something that I had not done in many, many days: I smiled. I completed my own circles and found the direction out.

You see, it turns out that I am patient. I have waited. And now it is my turn to be in the driver’s seat.