Turning into my parents

An insurance company advertises that they can save you money, but they can’t keep you from turning into your parents. I guess all of us become more like our parents as we age, no matter how often we told ourselves as children that we would never say or do certain things that our parents said and did.

The other day I was preparing to mow the lawn and the mail carrier said, “Looks like someone is getting ready to have some fun.” I laughed and told her, “No, but it has to be done.” Instantly I remember how many times my mother and my father said the same thing about lawn and garden work or about housework: “It has to be done.” I felt at times that they were committing themselves and their children to a lot of chores that really didn’t have to be done. Pulling weeds was never my favorite summertime activity. But they justified their own efforts—and the efforts they demanded of their children—with that simple slogan, “It has to be done.”

Both my parents grew up during the Great Depression. There were probably a lot of things that “had to be done” in those days, from growing their own vegetables to taking small jobs to earn a few coins to help support the family. Then they had the wartime years, where certain things “had to be done,” such as going without food to help feed the soldiers and collecting scrap metal and rubber for recycling as part of the war effort. Many of their peers settled into more comfortable lives in the Fifties and Sixties; but for my parents, life remained full of chores and duties that had to be done.

I wrote an essay in college about my parents’ “work ethic,” saying that I hoped I would not be as duty-driven as an adult. Some years I have succeeded in living up to my college dream, treating the things I do at my job as things I get to do, not things I have to do. At home I try to reduce the work that has to be done—as I’ve written before, one hour of lawn work a week is enough, in my opinion. My children have had chores, but they were meant to teach them life skills, not as something that “had to be done.”

To my surprise, that slogan of my parents came out of my mouth as naturally as if I invented it myself. “It has to be done.” The grass has to be mowed. The city will fine me if my lawn exceeds a certain height, and given all the rain we’ve had lately and all the rain in the forecast, there was only a window of a day or two open to get the grass cut.

What things do you say or do that you learned from your parents? J.

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A novel idea–part three

When Jason Hero won the lottery, he did spend some of his winnings on his personal life. He bought some new clothing. He bought a new car. He bought a larger house, one on a lot large enough that he would not have to hear his neighbors. He improved his diet, buying more fresh fruits and vegetables that he had not been able to afford in the past. But Jason did not invest much money in unnecessary luxuries. He was not interested in a fancy car or fancy clothing; what he bought was practical and comfortable.

Jason (to borrow a line from the musical Hello, Dolly!) believed that money is like manure: it is meant to be spread around to help things grow. So Jason invested some of his millions of dollars in starting two new businesses.

One of his new businesses was called Green Stealth Lawn Service. The Green in the name was not just a boast of greener lawns; Jason intended his lawn care service to be environmentally friendly. He did not offer pesticides or fertilizers; only grass cutting and leaf and debris removal. The Stealth in the name represented the fact that Jason’s workers were to be so quiet that the homeowner wouldn’t even know they had come. Instead of gasoline lawn mowers, they would use hand-operated reel mowers and hand-held trimmers. Instead of leaf blowers, they would use rakes. With the savings in equipment and fuel, Jason’s company would pay higher salaries than competing lawn care companies. Therefore, Green Stealth could afford to hire the best workers and to keep only those who followed the rules. Clippings and leaves and other lawn debris would be packed in biodegradable bags which the workers would leave on a lot purchased by Jason for that purpose. After a year or two of business, Jason would be able to offer his customers mulch, rich compost, and fill dirt as an additional service. The workers and their equipment would arrive in electric-powered trucks, keeping the theme of quiet and environmentally friendly.

Jason rented an office with a telephone for his company. He hired a manager who was in charge of hiring and scheduling. Jason was a customer of Green Stealth Lawn Service. Twice he had workers fired for breaking company rules and bringing leaf blowers to the job. (This would be described in much detail in the novel I thought about writing.)

Jason’s other business idea was inspired partly by the Disney theme parks, partly by Renaissance fairs, and partly by nostalgic movies such as Back to the Future. Jason purchased several pieces of property around the country and had each developed in a different way. One was built on the pattern of a medieval village, complete with a castle. Another was a western ranch, set around the end of the nineteenth century. A third was a suburban community, with all the houses and cars and stores resembling those of the 1950s. Another was a pre-Civil War southern plantation. In each case, Jason had the developers create dwellings that could be rented that would portray the flavor of the time period depicted, yet would also have modern comforts including heat and air conditioning, and hot and cold running water. Customers could come and stay for a night or two, or for a week or longer. When they made their reservations, they would include their clothing sizes; and when they arrived, they would be given clothing suitable for the time and place. They would be served meals also matching the time and place. All the staff—greeters, food servers, property cleaners, maintenance—would be actors and actresses trained to complete the experience of a medieval village, a 1950s suburb, or whatever else the property was designed to represent. Considering the amount of money people pay for the Disney experience and for Renaissance fairs, Jason figured his nostalgia vacations would also be profitable over the long term. His lottery winnings made the short-term construction possible.

Jason also had a thought about using his money to help the homeless, but that will have to wait for another post. J.

Where the grass is greener

I know that many of you are still looking out your windows and seeing snow on the ground, but today I began my outdoor spring cleaning, which consists largely of raking and bagging leaves. I raked and bagged a few leaves back in October and November, but I allowed others to remain through the winter, giving the lawn a natural blanket of protection and fertilization.

It was a pleasant afternoon to be outside. Other people in the neighborhood were not working outdoors with their loud power tools, so I was able to enjoy the songs of the birds and the shush of the leaves being pulled by my rake. In addition, I got a good hour and twenty minutes of exercise, good for the heart and the muscles, although my lower back will be sore for the rest of the day. Raking in the spring requires more effort than raking in the fall. The leaves have settled into the grass, and it takes some work to dislodge them. But springtime raking gives the lawn a nice combing, which is healthy for the grass.

My neighbor, Mrs. Dim, has a horror of fallen leaves. Scarcely a day has passed that she has not been moving leaves away with her loud leaf blower. She also is horrified by wildflowers, which she calls weeds. Her lawn has been treated to destroy dandelions, clover, violets, and other native flora. I, on the other hand, delight in the spots of color that nature and its Creator provide. In a week or two we will have thousands of tiny pinkish purple flowers springing up in the lawn. They will provide a colorful spectacle for two or three weeks before disappearing again into the grass. After them will come the daisy fleabane.

About half the lawns in the neighborhood have the earlier flowers. But I seem to be the only homeowner who permits the daisy fleabane. I find it to be a beautiful wildflower, but Mrs. Dim does not agree. A few years ago, she even called a city official to take a look at my patch of wildflowers. He said that they are cool.

When Mrs. Dim removes leaves, she makes a lot of noise. She also puts them into plastic bags for the city to haul away. When her grandchildren have reached her current age, her leaves will still be sitting in a dump, encased in plastic, doing nobody any good. My leaves go into paper bags, designed to join the leaves in decomposing and enriching the soil. After benefiting my lawn over the winter, they will be of use elsewhere in the near future.

Ironically, Mrs. Dim’s tended lawn of one hundred percent grass is still dormant, a bland shade of tan or pale yellow. But where my grass has been protected, it is already green. For the next few days, the grass will actually be greener on my side of the fence. Take that, Mrs. Dim! J.

Oak leaves

Forty years ago, the developers who built the neighborhood where I live decided to construct houses in an oak forest without ripping out all the oak trees; they preserved as many as they could. So we have all the benefits of living among oak trees: the beauty, the shade, the wildlife. We also have the costs of living among oak trees: the falling leaves in autumn, the allergies. For me, the benefits far outweigh the costs. I don’t complain about the oaks or their leaves; I am distressed whenever a homeowner decides to remove oak trees from his or her property.

The city owns a giant vacuum cleaner truck that travels around the various neighborhoods, reaching each neighborhood two times every autumn, to pick up leaves from the curbside. They only pick up leaves within six feet of the street. Many homeowners rake their leaves to the curbside and let the piles sit there until the truck comes and takes them away. The city shreds the leaves and uses them as mulch in the city parks. I strongly approve of this policy.

My house is at the end of a cul de sac, one of five whose driveways lead into the circular turnabout. As a result, the property is a trapezoid rather than the traditional rectangle: tiny little front yard; expansive back yard and side yard. Because of this arrangement, I don’t have much of a curb for depositing leaves; the driveway consumes half of the curbside and the mailbox takes up another quarter, leaving four or five feet for the weekly garbage and biweekly recycling pickup. Some years I’ve tried piling leaves on those few square feet available, but my property receives far more fallen leaves than will fit in that area. Besides, putting leaves there leaves no room for the garbage and recycling containers. So, like many other people in the neighborhood, I bag my leaves and leave them to be picked up on Monday morning, not by the giant vacuum cleaner, but by the regular truck that carries lawn and garden waste to the dump. Unlike many other people in the neighborhood, I put my leaves in biodegradable paper bags rather than plastic bags. In two or three years, even in the city dump, my leaves and their bags will have become fertile soil that eventually will find its way into the city ecosystem to the benefit of other trees and various plants. Mrs. Dim’s leaves, on the other hand, will still be encased in plastic when her grandchildren have reached her present age, providing no benefit to anyone or anything.

Saturday morning Mrs. Dim was busy blowing her leaves into piles with a loud leaf-blower, shredding them with her mower, and then emptying the mower bag into large black plastic bags to leave on the street. She is one of several in the neighborhood who handle leaves in that fashion, so Saturdays are often accompanied by chorus of blowers and mowers from dawn to dusk.

Saturday afternoon I got out my rake and my “bearclaws” and my paper bags. (Bearclaws are like rakes without long handles. They fit over each hand to enable the user to scoop up copious amounts of leaves and drop them into a bag.) In about one hour I was able to clean leaves off the deck, the front lawn, and the driveway, filling nine bags. I stopped after that hour of work for three reasons. First, only eight bags fit on the curbside, two rows of four. Second, I generally refuse to spend more than an hour each week on lawn work. Third, an hour of raking and lifting and bending is about all my back and my allergies can handle. So the leaves in the back yard and the side yard will have to wait for another day—perhaps later this autumn, perhaps not until spring.

When I started working in the front lawn, Mrs. Dim was washing her car on her driveway. Mrs. Dim has a routine system of washing a vehicle with great attention to detail, often taking two hours or more to complete. She bellowed at me—Mrs. Dim never talks; she always bellows—”Hey, J., who do you think is going to win the War of the Leaves?”

I looked upwards. “My money is on the trees,” I told her. They’ve had a lot of years of practice, and they’re good at what they do.”

“I know,” she said. “I raked this morning, and look—you can hardly tell that I did it.” I could tell that she did it; there were a lot of black plastic bags piled on the street, but it was true that a few more leaves had fallen since the morning. “I’m going to wait two weeks before I rake again,” she announced.

“I think that’s a good plan,” I responded.

After that we both worked in relative silence. I enjoyed the shushing of the leaves as I raked and gathered them. I enjoyed the crunching as I walked through sections I had not yet raked. Unfortunately another neighbor was using his blower to clear his back yard, so I could not completely enjoy a peaceful afternoon, but it came close.

I imagined a further conversation with Mrs. Dim. I imagined her asking me why I was putting my bags of leaves back by the shed instead of leaving them at the curb until Monday morning’s pickup. I imagined me telling her that no one likes to look out their front window and see a pile of bags. I imagined her agreeing and saying that she always puts her trash next to the driveway so she doesn’t see them from the house. “I’ve noticed,” I would say, because her driveway and her trash are what I see when I look out the front window of my house.

That’s the price of having a trapezoidal lot with an expansive back lawn and side lawn and a tiny front lawn. When Mrs. Dim washes her car, it’s as if she’s doing it in our front lawn; it’s right outside our living room windows. When Mrs. Dim blows her leaves or mows and trims and edges, her noisy tasks are happening right in front of our house. When Mrs. Dim carries on a conversation with another neighbor or with someone on the telephone, her words are broadcast throughout our house. What can you do? It’s not criminal behavior you can report to the police; it’s just one of the nuisances of having neighbors.

I should have a clever concluding paragraph to wrap up this rambling account, but nothing comes to mind. Feel free to add a conclusion of your own devising. J.

Why does he do it?

Soren Kierkegaard describes a man who lived in a quiet neighborhood of Copenhagen. This man, a bookkeeper, was respected and well-lived, for he was kind, educated, generous, and particularly benevolent toward children. This man had one peculiar habit. Every day, between eleven o’clock and noon, he would pace the same path in the city streets. Any other hour of the day he would greet people and talk with them, but no one could interrupt his daily hour of pacing. Back and forth he would walk, an intent look in his eye, but completely unaware of the world around him. No one in his neighborhood knew how this habit began, but they tolerated it in him because he was so good to them the rest of the day.
A man like this lives in my neighborhood. Every Saturday, unless the weather is cold or raining, he paces back and forth in his yard. Like that man Kierkegaard describes, he walks back and forth without purpose for about an hour. Like Kierkegaard’s bookkeeper, he is courteous and kind the rest of the week. For this one hour, though, this man seems controlled by some thought no one else can know. No one dares to interrupt him as he paces. He moves back and forth, an intent look on his face, until the hour is over and he returns to normal.
I wonder about this man. I wonder what sort of obsession or compulsion causes him to pace in this way. Please understand, I am in no way mocking Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I have considerable sympathy for all who struggle with that problem, and I would not wish it on anyone. It seems possible to me that this man is dealing with that kind of issue in his life.
Otherwise, I wonder if that man is engaged in some religious pursuit. Once again, I have the highest respect for religion and would never mock it. It occurs to me that this man may be entranced in some sort of mediation that is meant to bring him closer to God or lift him to a higher level of consciousness.
I should think, though, that his meditation might be disturbed by the noisy lawnmower this man pushes in front of him as he paces.
Some reader might say, “OK, I see what you did there, J. Very funny to set us up with compulsive pacing and then tell us he is just mowing his lawn.” Before you assume that I wrote all this for the sake of a joke, consider that I am very serious about my question: Why does he do it? Why this obsession with a patch of grass that sends this poor man outside, week after week, to toil and labor in service of his lawn?
Yes, I cut my grass when it has gotten long enough to need cutting. I do not treat it as a religious ceremony, though, because I just try to get it done as quickly as possible, leaving time for more important things. If this man’s lawn maintenance is part of his religion, I envy his zeal. I wish I could serve my Lord as faithfully as he serves his lawn. If I could bring to my Christian living the kind of energy and determination shown by this man and others like him, I could truly be numbered among the saints.
If, however, this behavior is obsession or compulsion, I feel sorry for this man. To be in the chains of a habit that sends him out, every Saturday morning, to mow and trim and fertilize and tend his lawn, when he could be doing more important things, must be misery. I try to be kind to him whenever our paths cross, hoping my kindness can somehow compensate for this man’s unfortunate slavery to a patch of grass.
J. (originally posted May 5, 2015)

Murder in the neighborhood

Mrs. Dim is at it again.

Let’s get this straight from the beginning: a weed is an unwanted plant. There’s no other way to define the word. I believe that each person who pays a mortgage and property taxes has the right to define which plants are weeds on his or her property and which plants are wanted. If I think roses are ugly, then I can call rose bushes “weeds” and remove them from my property. I have no right to harm my neighbor’s rose bushes.

One of the native wildflowers in this neck of the woods is called daisy fleabane. It’s an elegant plant with small white daisy-like flowers with yellow centers that bloom in the spring and the summer. You can see clumps of them along the highway—the highway department encourages their growth. At first I didn’t recognize them, and I mowed them down along with the rest of my lawn. Two years ago I deliberately avoided a patch and let the plants grow and bloom. I did so again last year. Mrs. Dim called city hall to complain about my weeds. A man came out from city hall, looked at them, said they were fine, told her so, and called me and told me so. End of story… or at least it should be.

Again this year I recognized the emerging daisy fleabane and mowed around the patch. A few had started to bloom, but the leaves of many more were recognizable.

A week later, the next time I mowed, the plants that had been flowering were desiccated. The leaves of those that had not produced flowers were yellow with no flower stalks.

I suspect herbicide. I believe they have been poisoned.

I wonder if Mrs. Dim would confess to the crime if I asked her. She might point proudly to the label of her broad-leaf herbicide to show me that it says “weed-killer,” as if that proves that she is right. Short of a spoken confession or some photographic evidence, I do not have enough proof to file a case against Mrs. Dim and accuse her of the attack.

I have to love a person like Mrs. Dim. Not only does the Bible require me to love my neighbor, and to love even a person who chooses to be my enemy, but resorting to hatred and revenge would only allow her side to win. She is a bitter old lady who seems to want everyone else to be as miserable as she is.

In this case, it helps that I have some daisy fleabane flourishing in a more sheltered part of the lawn. It is blooming nicely. I will encourage it to spread.

I wonder, though, about the values of a person who poisons her neighbor’s plants. If it is acceptable to kill a creature because it is noxious and detrimental to the neighborhood… well, once we start down that road, where does it end, Mrs. Dim?

If I am living in this house twelve months from now—and feel free to join me in praying that I have moved by then—I think I will invest in one of those motion-detector security cameras that are advertised online. I will hide it on my deck, aimed at my patch of daisy fleabane. If I get footage of Mrs. Dim poisoning my wildflowers, I can meet her at the police station and show the footage to the authorities. Then I can lovingly charge her with trespassing, malicious destruction of private property, and whatever else the authorities suggest. She can counter-charge me with raising plants of which she does not approve. That should cause a few police officers to smile, perhaps even chuckle. J.

The Sea of Time

“Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippiin’, into the future.” Fly Like An Eagle, lyrics by Steve Miller and Steve McCarty, ©1976.

For some reason those lyrics keep rolling through my mind as I try to compose a post or two for this blog. I didn’t want to write about that song. I wanted to write something timely for Thanksgiving. I also wanted to write about a workshop I recently attended on microaggression. Somehow the two subjects keep on merging into one potential post.

I am uncomfortable when someone dismissively refers to our National Day of Thanksgiving as “Turkey Day.” I am uncomfortable when advertisers portray the best part of the four-day weekend as the opportunity to go shopping. Our National Day of Thanksgiving has already been consumed by the excesses of the traditional feast; to see even that feast and family gathering disappear for many families, because of the excessive demands of shoppers and business-owners, borders on the tragic. I remember when the Day of Thanksgiving featured a special service at church to give thanks to the Lord for all his blessings. The feast and family gatherings, the televised parade and football games, all took second place to the church service. Now that service has been moved to Wednesday night… because we are too busy celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November to actually stop and give thanks.

Other potential posts are also swirling in my mind. This fall Mrs. Dim has been spending hours each day trying to clear her lawn and flowerbeds of autumn leaves. Every morning, of course, new leaves have fallen. This fall I have spent one hour a week dealing with autumn leaves. I bought biodegradable paper bags, and every Saturday I fill five bags and leave them by the curb to be taken by the city. When my grandchildren have grown, my leaves and bags will long have decomposed into fertile soil. Mrs. Dim’s leaves will still be trapped in their plastic bags.

When Christmas is on a Sunday (as it is this year), Advent is a full twenty-eight days long. Advent always includes four Sundays, but the season can be as short as twenty-two days when Christmas is on a Monday. As we observed a Super-moon this month, now we can enjoy a Super-Advent this year.

And time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, into the future. That song has never made sense to me. I think of time as linear, and existence in time is like a train traveling down the track. Each moment of existence, there is a little more of the past and a little less of the future. It would seem that time is slipping into the past, not into the future.

But Albert Einstein demonstrated more than a hundred years ago that time and space are relative. Perhaps that is why the future exists—perhaps it is fueled by moments from the past that slip into the future. George Santayana famously said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (When read in context, that sentence does not mean what people think it means, but that is yet another topic to consider.) Perhaps as our memories of the past fade to gray, the future becomes correspondingly brighter.

We know that a Day is coming when history as we know it will end. The Lord Jesus will appear in glory with all his angels and with the spirits of all the saints. All the dead will be raised, and every person will stand before his throne for judgment. Some will be welcomed into his perfect new creation, while others will be sent away. To open his kingdom to unworthy sinners, Jesus has already entered this polluted creation and paid the penalty for all sins. Therefore, for those who trust in him the Day of the Lord is not Judgment Day; the Day of the Lord is the beginning of a new and eternal life. The new creation will not follow the rules of entropy and decay that we know in this world. There will be no pain, no suffering, no tears, and no death. In that world, time will indeed be perpetually slipping into the future.

For that, we can be truly thankful. J.

A heavenly conversation

I wish I could take credit for writing this conversation. I must be honest, though, and confess that I found it at work this morning. The author is unknown; what I found was an email sent and printed in 2002. Aside from depicting the Creator as less than all-knowing, I think it is a very clever way of saying what I have been saying all along. J.

GOD: Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle, and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect, no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought, and multiply with abandon. The nectar from their long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees, and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colours by now. But all I see are these green rectangles.

ST. FRANCIS: It’s the tribes that settled there, Lord—the Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers “weeds” and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

GOD: Grass? But it’s not colorful. It doesn’t attract butterflies, birds, and bees—only grubs and sod worms. It’s temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it—sometimes twice a week.

GOD: They cut it? Do they bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS: No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

GOD: Now let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut if off and pay to throw it away?

ST. PRANCIS: Yes, Sir.

GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

ST. FRANCIS: You aren’t going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

GOD: What nonsense! At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so Myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn the leaves fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It’s a natural circle of life.

ST. FRANCIS: You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

GOD: No! What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?

ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call “mulch.” They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

GOD: And where do they get this “mulch”?

ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.

GOD: Enough! I don’t want to think about this anymore. Catherine, you’re in charge of the arts. What movie have they scheduled for us tonight?

ST CATHERINE: “Dumb and Dumber.” Lord, it’s a really stupid movie about…

GOD: Never mind. I think I just heard the whole story from Francis.

 

First Friday Fiction: The Mystery of the Yellow Mustang

“That yellow car is in that neighbor’s driveway again,” Dorothy Dimmerton observed one morning.

“So what, Mom?” Johnny asked, yawning between bites of cereal. “Maybe he’s bought a new car.”

Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “That car was parked there one morning last month, and then it was gone for three weeks. Now it’s back. I think something funny is happening next door.”

Johnny yawned again. “Maybe he test-drove it last month and kept it overnight, and now he’s finally bought it,” he suggested.

“I looked for a sticker in the window or for a temporary paper plate. No, that car belongs to someone else, and I’m guessing that whoever she is spent the night at his place.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, Mom,” Johnny said. “What the two of them do in his house is their business, not ours.”

Dorothy cleared her throat, and then said nothing else. However, she resolved that she would keep an eye on that neighbor’s house and driveway until she had solved the mystery of this yellow car.

Dorothy Dimmerton had spent most of her life on army bases. Her father had been a soldier. Her husband had been a soldier. They had needed her help to keep their houses on base tidy and efficient. Dorothy followed the same pattern of tidiness and efficiency today. The problem was, nobody really needed her. Johnny didn’t care how the house or the yard looked. That neighbor next door obviously didn’t care either. All Johnny needed was a bedroom where he could sleep or play video games or watch movies when he wasn’t at work flipping hamburgers. He even bought his own breakfasts. Dorothy kept the door to Johnny’s room closed so she didn’t have to see its disorder.

Johnny might not need her, but the house needed her. It wouldn’t clean itself, as Dorothy’s mother had frequently said when Dorothy was a girl. The lawn needed her—it relied on her to water it every day and to mow and trim it once or twice a week. The deck behind the house needed her—every day she had to blow leaves and other debris off the deck. That neighbor next door seemed content just to run a mower over his grass every week or so. She didn’t know what kind of job he had or who his family or friends might be. So far as she was concerned, he was useless, taking up space in the world for no good purpose.

Now that she was watching, she saw that yellow car in his driveway every morning except for weekends. She didn’t know what time of night it arrived—early to bed and early to rise was one of her mottos. She did sometimes see the driver when she left in the morning. She was young and slender, well-dressed, but Dorothy tried not to stare at her while Dorothy pulled weeds or raked leaves or moved the sprinkler from one place to another.

Then, one Saturday, she was able to declare triumphantly, “I finally saw her face!”

“Whose face?” Johnny asked as he poured milk on his cereal.

“The driver of the yellow car. Usually she isn’t here over the weekend, but the car is there this morning. Right after I started the mower, I looked up, and she was staring out the window at me.”

“Yeah, what time was that? Seven o’clock? Six-thirty?” Johnny deliberately yawned as he asked.

“You know I have to get the work done early, before it gets too hot outside,” Dorothy answered, “but you’re missing the point. I know who she is now…boy, are you going to be surprised!”

“Surprise me, then,” Johnny told her.

“She’s the woman who murdered her husband last spring.” When Johnny didn’t react, she said, “Don’t you remember? It was on the TV news.”

Johnny thought for a minute before he said, “Yes, Mom, I remember. But you’ve got the story wrong. She didn’t murder her husband. A girlfriend he had on the side killed him.”

“Maybe,” she sneered. “Maybe they worked together.” Dorothy shook her head and snarled, “I wonder if he knows that he’s sleeping with a murderer.”

“Who says that they’re sleeping together?” Johnny asked. “Maybe Tom’s letting her use a spare bedroom.”

“I’ve seen her,” Dorothy retorted. “I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

Every morning but on Saturdays, the suspicious woman would leave that neighbor’s house and drive off in her yellow car. A few minutes later, that neighbor would lock the front door, get in his own car, and drive away. Dorothy fumed at their effrontery. Didn’t they know that they were bringing their filth into a nice, respectable neighborhood? Dorothy didn’t say a word to either of them. She didn’t even make eye contact with them. If she pushed the mower with a little more vigor as one of them came out the door, she doubted that they even noticed. Well, if they were going to ignore her, she could keep on ignoring them. She had no intention of lowering herself to their level by treating their malfeasance as normal behavior.

Summer ended and school began. Schoolchildren walked past Dorothy’s house on their way to the bus. She kept a careful eye on them, making sure that none of them set foot on her grass. Most mornings she was outside, blowing leaves off the deck, then gathering them into piles she could scoop into a bag and leave on the curb. After one such morning of diligent work, she glared at Johnny at the kitchen table and exclaimed, “I can’t understand how she can show her face in public like that!”

Johnny sighed. “Who are you talking about, Mom?”

“The whore who is living with that neighbor next door. The way she walks to her car, you’d think she owns the place.”

Again, Johnny sighed. “If you ever spoke with Tom, you’d know that there is more to the story than you have imagined in your dirty little mind.”

“I suppose you believe whatever he told you,” she snarled at Johnny.

“I do believe him, and you should too. After her husband was killed, Jessica went and stayed with her parents for a while. Then she tried to come back home, but she couldn’t bear to walk into her own house. Memories of the murder were too painful for her. For a while she tried living in a motel, but that was using up her money too fast.

“Tom and Jessica work at the same office. He found out what she was enduring, and he offered her a spare room in his house. They have separate rooms, even separate bathrooms. They both drive their own cars downtown so no one at work suspects anything is going on between them. The main reason they do that, though, is that—really—nothing is going on between them.”

Dorothy paused. Perhaps she was being too hard on that neighbor and his friend. Perhaps, in his own way, he was being helpful and useful to another person in this mixed-up world. Dorothy didn’t often consider the possibility that she could be wrong. Even now, a thought in the back of her head suggested that that neighbor had lied to Johnny to cover up his sin. She guessed that she would never know the truth. Not knowing, she felt no regret for the cold shoulder she was showing them.

Petty contempt

The heat has been extreme, even dangerous, lately. Lawn care has not been a priority for me. My work allows me to spend the day in air conditioned buildings. When I get home in the late afternoon, the temperature and humidity are reaching their peak for the day, and I don’t feel like walking around the property behind a gasoline-powered motor with a spinning blade.

When I came home one day this week, I was pleased to see that Mrs. Dim was doing her yardwork in the afternoon. Her habit of running her mower and trimmer and blower early in the morning has not been helpful to my efforts to start the day pleasantly. I thought it would be right neighborly of me to go ahead and shorten my grass the next day so her surroundings would be tidy, consistent with her own property. Meanwhile, as I worked at my home computer that afternoon, I kept an ear open to her work. If she should collapse in the heat, I was ready to be at her side and to call for help. She wisely took frequent breaks, resting in the shade, until her work was finished for the day.

I got home from work the next day and changed into my usual mowing outfit—an old T-shirt, jeans dappled from painting projects, tattered tennis shoes, and a baseball cap encrusted with salt from several years of sweat. Anyone in the neighborhood would recognize my mowing uniform. I filled a large plastic mug with water and went out the front door, heading around the corner to get the mower out of the shed. I filled the gas tank and took the mower to the front of the house to trim the front lawn. As I came around the corner of the house, I noticed that Mrs. Dim was driving away in her car.

This is not the first time this year that she has left the neighborhood while I was mowing. I wonder if the sound of other people’s lawn tools bothers her as much as her lawn tools disturb me. More likely, I think, she cannot bear to watch the quick and shoddy way I care for my lawn. I started the mower and began to work, and then I saw what Mrs. Dim had done.

In the time it took me to get out the mower and fill the gas tank, she had moved her sprinkler to the edge of her property, so that more than half the water it was distributing was landing on the grass I was about to mow.

I considered moving her sprinkler a few feet from the property line at least long enough to finish my work on that part of the yard. However, I was reluctant to set foot on her lawn or adjust her equipment. I try not to give her any reason to complain of my behavior; she complains enough about the things I do not do. Instead, I proceeded with my mowing while wondering what prompted her to move the sprinkler. Several possibilities crossed my mind.

• Perhaps her daily watering of her lawn is on a strict schedule and nothing—certainly not consideration for a neighbor—could cause her to change that schedule.

• Perhaps she was concerned about my well-being in the heat and wanted to make sure I would be cooled with splashes of fresh water while mowing.

• Perhaps it never occurred to her that watering grass and mowing grass are not generally done at the same time (although I’ve never seen her mow and water her own grass at the same time).

• Perhaps she is continuing her canine behavior of marking her own territory.

• Perhaps it occurred to her that putting her sprinkler on the property line while I was getting ready to mow my grass would be one more petty gesture of her general contempt for me and my way of maintaining my lawn.

Does Mrs. Dim have friends with whom she can share stories of her pranks? Do they sit around a table at some fast-food restaurant and cackle together over her amusing accounts of our contretemps? Does she have a blog where she can post descriptions of her behavior to the admiration of her many followers?

If not, I hope she appreciates the publicity that I am providing her. And I am pleased to report that my lawn—not just by the property line, but throughout my property—is as green as the lawns that have been watered daily, thanks to the occasional summer showers we have received this month. A minor vindication of that sort is all that I needed to make my day. J.