spring is officially in full swing when you have to resume mowing the lawn. (and when your car changes color from the pollen...) i rather detest mowing. it's dusty, noisy, and tiring. at this time of year, it's not so bad, but later on, when it's hot, it just about kills me. when i am finished mowing in the summer, i am so knackered by the end of the job that i can barely coil up the 40,000 feet of extension cord that my little electric push-mower requires. i stumble indoors, shedding things as i go; nasty grassy shoes at the garage door, shorts and shirt just inside in the laundry room. generally i gulp down several pints of water before dragging myself upstairs to the bath in my underwear, which is so sweat-drenched that i'd rather just throw it away instead of washing it. my face, should i glance in the mirror, is a strange shade that only sickly heat-struck caucasians can produce---simultaneously pink and grey. i don't look well, i don't feel well, i'm utterly exhausted. but the first couple of mowings in the spring and the last couple in autumn aren't nearly that bad.

still, as i was struggling with the mower this afternoon, i was having one of those cranky mental dialogues that overtake me when i am stuck with a task i don't like. it crossed my mind that the whole idea of having grassy yards around houses is something that ought to be deep-sixed, at least for modern middle-class households without a gardener. and probably the concept of a lawn, like so many other outdoor things, works much better in europe than it does here. better climate, less vicious vegetation, fewer fecking bugs!

so why do americans seem so wedded to their grass plots? they are a right pain in the ass. they require ridiculous amounts of water to get established and to maintain through the dry, hot middle of summer. i bet we've all got a neighbor who waters their lawn even when there is a period of water restriction in effect, like the selfish bastards that they are. the grass types are frequently ill-selected for the area in which they are grown. (ever seen those telltale spreading brown patches of zoyshia grass like cancers creeping through more indigenous grass? that stuff was a bad idea; never meant to be planted above the southern states...) lawns are even more intensively treated with chemicals than agricultural fields, and no matter what the lawn service guy says, those chemicals are vile. as in "don't let your kids or pets out on the grass for x amount of hours" whenever the lawn has been sprayed. and finally, do we really enjoy the hours of misery associated with maintaining these unnatural patches of virulent green monoculture grass? not to mention, wouldn't you love to sleep in on saturday mornings without being awakened by the growling and whining of people's mowers and string-trimmers?

i grew up in a rural area. we had a big lawn that was separated from the surrounding farm fields only by our driveway. it was a typical rural lawn, by which i mean it was a mixture of grass and weeds, with a strong emphasis on the weed part. this is how all yards used to look, whether they belonged to a redneck or a country squire type. it was all more or less green, and it was mowed regularly but not shaved, and it never, ever received one iota of fertilizer, pesticide, or any chemical whatsoever. it got no water beyond what the clouds naturally bestowed upon it. it was not de-thatched, leaf-raked, overseeded, limed, or cosseted in any way. and guess what? it grew just fine. i am realizing that the whole mindset about lawns has changed, at least in the suburban area in which i now live. these people don't say "mow the lawn"; they say "cut the grass". and they mean grass, because that's all they will permit to grow in their yards. they detest dandelions. they abhor clover. they deplore plantain and despise buttercups. ground ivy and wild strawberries make them grind their teeth. the very idea that something should flower in the midst of the grass offends them. they pour money, time, water, (and chemicals) into the ongoing effort to eradicate every other growing thing and keep that expanse of poison green flawless. yet i hardly ever see them in their yards. no mums with babies on picnic rugs in the sun. no toddlers playing with cups and pitchers of water or toys or big sparkly balls. no teens lounging and reading with the ipod on. no family dinners outside, no morning coffee or evening cocktail on the porch, no game of croquet or bocce on all that smooth-shaven green stuff. so what good is it? couldn't they just as well have a yard full of nettles or cactus, for all the use they make of it?

actually, there is a bit of a movement afoot to "kill the lawn", but it's very much in its infancy. outside of areas with chronic water shortage, such as arizona, the big toxic lawn reigns supreme still. but there are a few brave people who are reducing the size of their lawns, replacing some of the grass with expanded flower and shrub beds, or regionally suitable plantings of native species. some are letting whole sections of large yards revert to meadow during the growing season, and broadcast-seeding them with wildflowers. sounds fine to me, but i doubt whether my immediate neighbors would comprehend it very well. my lawn looks distinctly untended compared to the ones on either side. i regularly get little brochures from lawn care agencies stuck in my door...and yes, even i can admit that the little patch of front lawn looks ragged. but it looks that way because the soil was compacted during the house building process and because the lousy typical lawn care practices have favored the survival of the toughest weeds over the prima donna grass that was planted there. i expect that with a little benign neglect and patience it will improve. the clover that offends the neighbors is doing its part to improve the crappy soil, as are the taproots of the dandelions and the happy little earthworms that live in it because it hasn't been dosed with poisonous substances lately. i mow the leaves in autumn and leave the bits to compost into the lawn instead of bagging them up and having them hauled away. the back yard looks fairly decent, as the soil there was less destroyed. it's quite lush, with nice grass sprinkled with lovely little flowers from the buttercups and wild strawberry and clover. i understand the appeal of the velvety green expanse of a freshly-cut lawn, but for me it's enhanced by the flowers and things intermingled with the grass. and they help distract me from the boring misery of pushing a mower around the lawn every couple of weeks.

so i don't aspire to having the perfect swath of grass around my house. for reasons both economical and environmental, as well as sheer laziness, i have decided to confine my lawn maintenance to occasional mowing. my house doesn't look like versailles, so it doesn't require formal landscape perfection. although i wouldn't mind having just one gardener to do the boring mowing while i lounge like marie antionette...

he is the third child. his sister and brother have already learned what he will learn---wariness. when the first boy was an infant, his mother turned the gas line on, turned the pilot light off, and sat down with her baby to die in the kitchen. a neighbor stopped in, interrupting her plan, and mama went off to spend a few weeks or months in the mental hospital. now, with three children, she has settled into a simpler pattern of verbally, mentally, and physically abusing them. beatings occur almost daily, for any infraction or for no reason. he learns that he is not good. he learns that punishment is predictable, but that the reasons for it are not. he learns fear and anxiety.

he treasures just one memory of a time when his mother smiled at him. he was a toddler. he would spend years of childhood trying to elicit another smile, trying to figure out what magical thing he had done to win a moment of approval. he will endure the frequent beatings without any context of what he could have done differently.

people smile when they see him leaving the store with his mother, because he looks up at her and asks. "was i good? mama, i was good, wasn’t i?" he was, and she knows it, and they both pretty much know that it won’t save him.

the older brother is in high school. he’s working already, saving his money to get out of the house. he refuses to help his mother beat the little boy one day, which infuriates her. it is not his job to help her abuse his little brother. but he doesn’t try to stop her, either. the sister keeps to herself, stays in her room. sometimes, just for her own amusement, she will say that her little brother has done something wrong, just to see him get punished. it may be the only power she has. the father is often away for his job, but when he is home, he is no help. no intervention comes from him.

in elementary school he is a good kid. bright, funny, active, but not naughty. his teachers like him. he has a crush on the girl with long braids. he makes himself a superman cape and tries to fly. he has learned not to say anything about what he wants or likes, because it will surely be taken away from him.

this week, he is terribly hungry, because mama has denied him anything but some bread and water. she sent him outside and told him to collect every stone from the wooded area behind the house, or he would get no food at all. there are a lot of stones. no one could possibly find them all. his father comes home from work one day and takes his son to run an errand in town. on the way home, they stop for a burger. the father watches as his son eats every crumb swiftly, silently, desperately. he orders another burger and sees this one disappear just as fast. a few questions make it plain that this isn’t just the hunger of a rapidly growing boy.

he grows accustomed to hiding his hurts. he mops his own blood off the floor after she beats him so his mother will not be further displeased and his father will not have anything too obvious to ignore.

eight or nine years of living like this. eight or nine years of having the sky fall on his head nearly every day. his parents have separated. the beatings are so bad now that he is afraid she will kill him. one day, he refuses to cooperate in his own punishment. then she really does just about kill him, and they are running through the house. caught in a room, he fights back for the first time. he is fighting his own mother for his life. more blood on the floor.

and then, one day, while visiting his father, there is a phone call. his mother was found dead in their house. she has killed herself. at the funeral, and afterwards, well-meaning family and neighbors keep telling him that he must "let it out". they interpret his lack of tears as the shocked grief of a bereaved child. but inside, he feels a strange relief. he feels free. placed with an aunt who took him in for charity, he is calm. he does not mind her lack of affection. he goes to school, does his chores, gets a paper delivery route. the pattern of his life is set: he will go to school and go to work for years to come, and he will not complain, and somewhere in the secret places of his heart and mind that he kept safe, he will try to figure out who he is and why he is here on the earth. he will, despite it all, grow into a good man.

as an adult, he tells me these things quietly. water under the bridge, he says. i am amazed that he was able to be a good man, a good husband, a good father. it breaks my heart to think of him as a baby, as a child, looking for the simple nurturing affection that should be every child’s birthright, and never finding it.

i was driving along one of the single-lane roads this morning and was struck by the beauty of the trees in a field. it’s not a particularly well-loved bit of land; it’s been cleared and maybe farmed, but mostly it has sat awaiting its turn to be plastered with houses like the "phase one" section of the adjacent housing estate. in the meantime, it serves as a playground for ATV riders and part of it was cut over for a power line. it’s full of bushy little trees, nearly all of the same type. i would say that there may not be any such thing as a truly ugly tree (with the possible exception of ailanthus), but this field of trees is most notable visually as an exercise in verticality. they aren’t very big, and they are all striving for the light due to how closely they are growing. yet this morning they were beautiful enough to make me pull over and look at them for a moment, because they are covered in white blossoms. imagine a whole field, as far as your eye can go, shimmering with white. later i was thinking about how i, and presumably most other people, have driven by it 5 days a week for years and never really noticed it that much. you sort of expect the loveliness of the cherry trees that are blooming now in all the landscaping you see at businesses and homes, but maybe not the transformation of this unplanted, unarranged, unplanned expanse of scrub. it made me think about other areas of life that i treasure, and that i could easily have missed out on entirely if i hadn’t been paying attention and making conscious choices about things. like the relationship i am blessed to find myself in---which i almost missed, because he didn’t align with the expectations i had. not that he is not a beautiful man, because he is. in fact, he possesses every trait and quality, physical and mental and spiritual, that i could have identified as desired by me. but he and i almost missed connecting. chalk it up to reticence, maybe; we are both too polite for our own good sometimes. he’s emphatically not one of the "hey baby" chat-up kind of guys. but i think some of the near-miss was due to both of us having filters in our minds that made us doubt whether we were "correct" in our attraction to each other. i thought that he found me too brash, too young, and annoying. he thought that i found him not brash enough, too old, and not engaging enough to hold my attention. wrong on all counts, as a few conversations and a few days and evenings together quickly made clear.

what if i had continued to steer myself using the same old cloudy judgement that made me nearly miss getting to know the person who may just be my soulmate and partner for life? what if i had let doubt keep me from giving it one more shot? what if he had done the same?

it’s a good lesson. i have to wonder how many times we let ourselves get so distracted or depressed that we miss out on some of life’s most precious things. i’ve known parents who seem so wrapped up in other stuff and so resentful of yet another claim on their time that they don’t fully acknowledge the miracles that are their children. you see them all the time in restaurants and shops; the babies stuck in those snap-out carseat carriers, crying or just gently whimpering, and utterly ignored by their own parents. in a few short years, they’ll be in school and too big to be cradled against the chest anymore. i’d rather drop food or not eat than miss the chance to cuddle my baby. and i’ve lost dear friends in car accidents---one day the people you love are there and the next day they are gone. you have to cherish them daily, because you never know what tomorrow may bring. i’ve known a woman who woke up with a headache and went to bed that night with a diagnosis of inoperable brain tumor, 3 - 6 months to live. you can bet that she didn’t regret spending less time at the office if it gave her children more moments with her to remember. today is my daughter’s birthday, and i always remember how close i came to losing her during the pregnancy, and then how close she came to losing me due to childbirth complications. so i am going to fight like hell to keep my daughter close as she grows older. i am not going to be too busy to meet a friend for lunch. i am going to love this man fiercely for whatever time we have together. and i’m going to keep looking at the beauty of the world, in places expected and unexpected.

what will tomorrow bring? that is what we can never know, not for certain. the one thing we can be sure of is that each new day brings new opportunities to work on ourselves...

right now, i anticipate that my personal tomorrow will bring the following:

rain and cooler temps, based on the google weather forecast
breakfast with my dear one
a hot bath
a yoga class to teach midday
a pint or two at the pub
a snuggly evening

any and all of this could be derailed by a number of things. the weather forecast could be---shocking, i know---wrong. one of us could wake up with flu and not want breakfast. the power might go out and deny me a hot bath. my car might not start, keeping me from getting to the gym to teach yoga. or i could injure myself somehow, and be unable to teach. perish the thought, but it is possible that the pub could be out of guinness...it's happened once before. (i'm still recovering.) and the cherry on top, the snuggly evening, could be altered if someone isn't feeling well, or if my daughter needs to be picked up from her dad's house instead of staying all night, or if a friend called in need of help.

on the other hand, any and all of these things could be kicked up a notch. the weather forecast could be wrong entirely, and be replaced by a warm spell with lovely sunshine to lie in. we might decide to go out for breakfast, or to stay in bed instead of having breakfast...i might get to have an extra long bath, since i don't have to do the morning school run tomorrow. my yoga class might be unusually enjoyable to teach, or maybe i will run into someone i'd like to see on the way to or from class. the bartender at the pub might charge me the "single mum rate", as they do frequently, or i might get one of the bartenders who actually knows how to pour a proper pint of stout. and the evening---well, i don't see how that could be improved upon, but hey, maybe i'd find a little box under my pillow with a ring in it or something.

this is as far as i'm prepared to take speculation...i have learned that we never really know what will happen in life, no matter how much we try to control things. i just try to take it all in on a daily basis and enjoy the good parts without questioning whether they will be there tomorrow. i try to deal with the bad stuff by reminding myself that those too shall pass...people's lives change all the time, sometimes in little ways, sometimes dramatically, sometimes tragically, sometimes magically; we can be sure of nothing but the fact of this present moment. which doesn't stop me from anticipating some of that good stuff that might turn up tomorrow...

gender relations, unquestionably! so many people are impacted by various cultural, religious, or familial slants on how women and men should be... there are all these expectations about what it means to be a woman or what it means to be a man, and they are so limiting. they set up conflict between the sexes. they cause unjust, cruel, and exploitive behavior. sometimes, they directly impact the survival of children, as when people choose to limit the births of female infants, or feed baby girls less than baby boys, because their culture values boys more highly. they make it hard to live and raise children together without tons of personal conflict. they cause sorrow and hatred too, especially when people accept homophobic views. it's insane---i actually know men who will not wear a pink shirt because they think it will mark them as gay. and worse, they believe that being gay is some negative thing. i mean, wear whatever color shirt you like, for chrissake! and more importantly, love whomever you love! then there are all the negative things one is taught about being female, even today. and there are negative things about the expectations placed on men too. this stuff does no one any favors. i accept that there are cogent differences between men and women, biologically and neurologically speaking, but those things don't need to mean that we can't get along, play to our own individual strengths, and allow for a wide range of complementary functions. every time i see mainstream, mass-market children's clothing or furnishings/ toys catalogs, i am discouraged by how little progress has been made in the area of gender scripting. it may seem trivial, but i see it as a reflection of the status quo...the little girls' toys and furnishings and clothing are still largely pastels and flowers and princessy. they have dolls, toy appliances, "girly-girl" stuff, all in shades of pink, purple, and glitter. the little boys are to select from sports, nasty war toys, outdoorsy stuff, in a palette of primary colors or olive green. (or worse, camouflage, for the little warrior...) how does it serve us to raise most boys without letting them practice nurturing behaviors? or to raise the girls without the ability to set appropriate boundaries and find their strength? i know good men who have fought all their lives to accept themselves because they feel they are somehow different and thus less "manly" than the stereotypical guy in our culture. i know lots of women who have made crappy decisions because they felt obligated to act in certain ways to conform to the stereotypes of femaleness. and ask any gay people you know about navigating this culture...it's so screwed-up, and it does so much harm. let's level the playing field by tossing out the useless "girls are.../boys are..." iconography, and raise kids who can be who and what they are without limitation or fear. let them grow up into the unique men and women they will be, in a world where strength and gentleness are the province of both sexes.

in no particular order: the ground, the sky, running water, snow, rainy days by a fire, white horses, cats, children, trees, chocolate, indian food, music, books, art, dance, theater, colorful things, soft things, my bed, brave people, gentle people, struggling people, happy people, curious people, creative people, peaceful people, lilies, roses, stars, my daughter, my lover, my friends...

how extraordinary it feels to find someone of the opposite sex who values you for what and who you really are...to be truly seen, as a whole human being, not just a superficially appealing person. to get the impression that someone would like to know more about you than what you look like without your clothing on. and to know that you are also appreciated without your clothing. to feel that someone likes you because of, not in spite of, the characteristics that make you uniquely yourself. to discover that your intellect is neither threatening nor boring to the other person. to be treated with respect and consideration. to find that the fact of having a child already in your life is not a negative factor to this other person. to be supported in the need to put the child first. even more, to see someone taking joy in the presence of your child! to be able to relax completely in this person's company. to share the same preferences, priorities, and values. to feel a contentment so encompassing that it makes the past years of sorrow and struggle irrelevant, because you are a stronger, more mature, more appreciative person for having gone through it. to be free of expectations of failure. to have your heart open to the immediacy of the intense present and the possibility of an enduring future. it's like someone transplanted a seedling tree from a too-small pot into a wide green garden with its own talmud-attested angel bending tenderly over it, whispering grow, grow...

love...all the words i would use to describe it are inadequate. it's like trying to tell the nature of the universe by laying a few pebbles out in a pretty pattern. i find myself resorting to quotations from poets and novelists because it seems both safer and more satisfying. yet those don't always do justice to the depth of my feelings either. and when i feel the most, i have the hardest time saying what i feel. i can go on at length, poetically or prosaically, about mundane things. i can rhapsodize about the meal i had somewhere, the comfort of my bed, the sunrise. but when i want to tell someone how dear he is to me and how blessed i feel to be in his arms, i go mute. i can only resort to those 3 blunt and undescriptive words that are both overused and underused. i say "i love you" and my soul uncoils with joy at the truth of it and the rarity of the times i have had in my life to say so. i say it, and wonder if he knows how extraordinary it is for me to say it, how much it really means. i think so, i hope so, but i long for better words.

i must resort to quotes again:

"those three words are said too much, and not enough...i need your grace to remind me to find my own..."

"roar, lion of the heart, and tear me open."

"this night, there are no limits to what may be given...this is not a night, but a marriage."

wow, DREAM with capital letters, as if i had anything so grandiose or well-articulated! i have lots of dreams, but no organized plans for making any of them reality. i suppose i tell anyone who asks me about stuff what i wish or hope or dream...i suppose i sort of chip away at the obstacles between my dreams and their manifestation, but mostly i exist in a state of passive receptivity to life. this tends to work well for me. i am learning that if i really desire something, i need to have a very clear image of it in my mind, and then i need to step back from it and wait with an open mind and heart. it's rather eerie how often that is responded to by the universe. when i am muddled or unclear about what i want, i don't get it, or i get something that isn't a perfect match for what i needed or thought i wanted. when i have a proper picture in my heart about what i need, it frequently manifests just as i hoped or even better.  so perhaps the answer to "who have i told about my dream?" is simply "the universe". whatever is out there listening...

my first conscious memory is very simple---it's seeing and feeling the sun shining on me, through a window, i think.  i would have been just an infant at the time, so it is very tenuous.

i also have very early memories of looking up at the sky from my pram, which my mother used to roll outside and park in the grass. i was afraid of large birds, or any shape or shadow that reminded me of one, for some years, because apparently (according to my mother) a vulture swooped down and took my pacifier and flew off with it. really weird, i know. it probably explains some of the odder aspects of my personality, eh? and it's a family trait, because my own daughter is occasionally visited by birds, generally crows. they will fly directly at her for no clear reason and one pulled her hair repeatedly. she has, um, mixed feelings about this; i have tried to smooth it over by telling her the birds have messages for her. and maybe they do...

i remember the cats we had. there was a siamese who didn't take crap from anyone, least of all a human brat. i loved the cats.

when i was a toddler, my father accidentally broke my ankle in a bicycle wheel, so i remember sitting on the floor in my funny cast. i remember that it hurt, and that i was frustrated by having to drag myself around instead of walking along the furniture.

i remember being read to in the afternoons. my poor mother was probably trying to keep me out of her hair or settle me for a nap (good luck), and i would have happily listened to stories until nightfall. that's how i learned to read, from looking at the words as she read to me. it was like magic when i looked at a word and realized that i knew what it meant. i think it was in "frog and toad", but it might have been one of the beatrix potter stories. anyway, i looked at it, said it aloud, and my mother was very pleased.  for a while they thought i was repeating the stories from memory, which i am sure was part of the learning process, but one day they realized i was reading.

i recall certain toys---i had a little toy airplane with people to put in it that could be pulled along by a string. i liked the globe so much that they let me have it in my room. i would sit for long periods gently spinning it and looking at the land and water. after i could read, i would read the names of all the places aloud to myself and try to imagine what they were like.

i remember the first days of kindergarten---complete terror and mystification on my part. the teacher showed us how to draw a snowman by drawing three graduated circles just barely touching (head, a bigger one for the middle, a bigger yet for his base) and then putting in a dot face. i thought that looked really stupid and drew a proper snowman, with his sections melding together as they should and a carrot nose and twig arms. she took my drawing and put it in the bin, and told me to copy the one from the board like everyone else. i think that may have been the point at which i ceased extending automatic respect to adults. i wonder if i ended up majoring in art just to prove to her that i could draw!