My friend, Amy, sent me photos of the house and property she recently made an offer to purchase. It’s several hours removed from the city we both currently call home, located in the small town where she was raised. Amy’s mother died a year or two back but her father never left and resides there still.
It has been a rough patch for Amy recently: in addition to the death of a parent, she split with her husband and moved out of their condominium; she changed jobs but appears not to have found lasting satisfaction in her current gig. Before I departed to Arizona with Lola the pup, Amy had mused over dinner one night that she was giving serious thought to picking up the search for happiness elsewhere. Now, it appears she is going to do it! I for one sincerely hope she finds it.
Despite the idyll of an uncomplicated small-town life, relocating from a large urban area to a small one will not be without challenges. (I speak from first-hand experience, having gone this route myself once or twice in the past.)
***
As I look over Amy’s photographs, I recall Deer Tick Manor, the “palatial country estate” that Lee and I enjoyed for the better part of two decades. I reply to Amy’s texts with my heartfelt congratulations and an observation that, based on the photos she has sent, she will need a riding mower. During our time at Deer Tick Manor, Lee and I had owned three.
Lee loved riding the mower that we inherited with the house, and she was adept in its operation. Meanwhile, my friends and our loved ones viewed my driving skills as highly suspect. I was deemed such a potential danger to life and limb as to be effectively banned from the mower’s use when Lee was present, although I remain firmly convinced that the degree of actual danger I posed to myself and other living things was vastly overstated. In any case, I was tasked with gathering the medium-sized and larger branches from the ground and depositing these into a large cart. I’d load the cart, pull it across the property onto a narrow-paved path that ran parallel to our property line for pickup and disposal. This time-consuming and labor-intensive pre-mow ritual was necessary because the place occupied two and one-half partially wooded acres. It meant that despite the numerous trees, tall flowering shrubs, and ornamental grasses, there was still plenty of room for growing grass that would need mowing every ten days or so.
Being a city boy, I was new to this activity, a fish out of water, like Eddy Albert of Green Acres fame. On those rare occasions when I did get to operate the mower, I would flood its engine. Then, I’d fuss with and curse at the “dern contraption” until at last it started up again.
Eventually, we had to replace this mower, but our next ones were slightly too large to comfortably accommodate my tiny Lee, whose legs barely touched the clutch and pedals. If she leaned forward even slightly over the large steering wheel, this movement would cause her rear end to rise from the seat, which triggered a safety mechanism that instantaneously killed the mower’s engine.
Thus, it eventually fell to me to take charge of the mowing chores, and I came to look forward to performing these. I especially liked starting the mower in the spring for the first time after a long Winter rest. With the turn of a key, the mower would cough, fart exhaust with a loud backfire, and come alive, its throttle racing momentarily before settling into a slower, and steady, mechanical rhythm. The chassis trembles slightly as I shift into reverse and rumble backward out of the rickety wooden garage, onto the driveway apron.
At the edge of the lawn, I hover in neutral while lowering the mower blades until they meet the high grass. I find satisfaction seeing a cleanly shaved path emerging with each successive pass of the rotating blades. And with every pass I breathe deeply, taking in the intoxicating fresh fragrance of cut grass.
***
You can’t go home again. If Thomas Wolfe didn’t coin the phrase, then he certainly popularized it. The notion that there are things about our pasts we can never recapture, except perhaps imperfectly, in time and memory, ought to be familiar to anyone who has suffered the loss of a beloved parent, a spouse, a child, a childhood friend. Things inevitably change; it’s simply the way in an ever-evolving world.
In a post entitled “You Can’t Go Home Again,” Psychology Today (October 17, 2018), found at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/refire-don-t-retire/201810/you-cant-go-home-again, Dr. Morton Shaevitz argues that you can go home again, but of course it will be different. However, if you’re open to the differences, it can be a positive experience.
I plan to discuss this with Amy the next time we meet for lunch or dinner. Meanwhile, I must remind myself to take this lesson to heart whenever I find myself dwelling too deeply, or sadly, in the past.
