You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Yard work.
It’s Spring Time. Mother Earth has thrown off her winter parka and icy scowl. She is basking in renewal, arms stretched out wide, smiling at the sun.
“what took ya so long,” she says.
Thank God it’s Spring Time.
Months of frosty lethargy and icy hell are gone.
Now replaced with green and warmth and rebirth.
While lovely and welcome, it doesn’t come without its trade-off.
I’m standing in my yard, a test kitchen for weeds.
The over growth is tremendous, like an inpenatrable layer of bamboo and thickets.
It’s as if someone has sprinkled each root with rocket fuel and the vegetation is supercharged.
Spring has delivered a plethora of leaves and bushes and grass and critters and pollen.
My yard is a 1950’s horror movie of horticulture that has come alive like the blob.
Hedges are 3 feet higher than I remember. They are uneven like an inner city afro.
My grass is weeds. It is growing out of the sidewalk cracks, out of the curb, over the bricks that line the walkway.
I stand in this suburban jungle and sigh.
Happy Saturday I think to myself. I worked all week so I can torture myself with this.
I plug-in the hedge trimmer. It is covered with a sprinkling of green from the last time I pulled it from its box. It’s metallic teeth are sharp, ready to slice and dice back and forth and chop away the hedge that has grown like a virus.
I turn the hedge trimmer on. The blades scrape back and forth, each row of steel rubbing by the other, missing by microns.
I stare at the branches and barbs that have exploded over the winter like a frat boy’s ego.
I dip the cutting blade into the soft green pulp, letting the teeth start to chew.
I see stalks of grass and barbs fly into the air.
Suddenly there is dust and noise.
Where there was only chaos, a winter of discontent, now there is a battle to restore order, symmetry, property value.
It’s 89 degrees and the sweat comes quickly. I feel it bead on my forehead and then drip down to my eyes.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
I pull clumps of green from the hedge. Like that afro under the razor of an army barber, it is taking shape, becoming uniform.
Standing over the hedge, staring at a single spot for minutes at a time, gives a person time to think.
I think about the plant and the way it should look. How is it even alive after 4 months of intense Siberian winter. I think about the weeds growing up through the hedge, that wrap around the root like a May Pole.
And then there are the critters scurrying beneath me. Ants and spiders and creepy crawlers are running for their lives. To them I am Godzilla in a remake of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
I am a tornado of destruction chopping apart their homes. They are fleeing to their insect storm cellars, taking shelter wherever they can till this disaster with a sweaty forehead moves on.
I move around to the side of the house. The bush has grown over 15 feet tall.
“When the hell did that happen?” I say to myself, pulling the extension cord free from a stump in the garden.
I bring out the ladder. It’s sturdy. It’s 10 feet tall, solid metal.
The words caution: DO NOT STAND ABOVE THIS LINE are boldly printed across the frame.
I think back to a time when I did not pay attention.
Same house, same ladder. I was inside painting. I remember it clearly. I was standing above the warning sign. My sneakers are worn, I am holding a paint brush, I am reaching up as high as I can, on my tippy toes.
Suddenly I am falling backward off the ten foot perch.
If I was falling forward, that would be one thing. I might have been able to brace my fall, reach out, grab something.
But I am falling backward. I am in big trouble. The the only thing to break my fall is my neck.
THUD.
I hit the wood floor like a car running into a brick wall.
I SEE STARS AND THEN BLACK.
I lay on the floor. I am tingling. I cannot move. I feel pain in my shoulder and neck, but I am unable to assess the damage. I have trouble thinking. I am wobbly, woozy, scared.
Am I paralyzed? Can I move my feet and my hands. Nothing is clear as the ambiguous fog fills my thoughts as I lay on my back.
Soon paramedics are standing around me. They ask my name. I tell them. They ask my birthday? I am unsure when I am born.
They are putting my head in a stabilizing collar. They are lifting me quietly, carefully onto a back board.
For some reason, I remember telling them I’m sorry to be wasting their time.
“We were working anyway,” One of the EMT’s responds.
I remember them carrying me into the yard. I see the red swirling lights of the ambulance and fire truck striking the side of my house.
From the periphery, as they load me into the ambulance I recognize neighbors. Do they care? Or is this just something interesting to stare at to break up the monotony of their boring lives.
At the E.R. they determine I have a slight concussion and I am not paralyzed.
The pain in my shoulder will be a calling card I will have for the rest of my life.
The bone doctor will explain to me that our skeletal systems are held in our skin by pressure. And when I hit the floor with the force of a space capsule returning to Earth, my body decompressed in a nano-second. In that nano-second, my clavicle shifted slightly.
When the violence torqueing through my body ceased, my skeletal system repositioned itself slightly. My clavicle now had a new place of corporal residency, a fraction of an inch where God originally put it.
“We can’t operate to fix it,” the Bone Doctor told me.
Sort of the medical version of maximum effort; minimum results.
“You just gotta live with it.”
And so I have, since 2008.
It is with this vivid memory that I climb the ladder in my backyard jungle.
I grip each rung with my hand and make sure each foot is squarely in position.
I am clutching the hedge clipper and tugging on the extension cord.
It is dangerous, but I am being careful. I limit how high I will climb.
I work slow, thinking about where my feet are, where my hands are, where the extension cord is in conjunction to the metallic teeth that will churn and rip with the slightest tug on the trigger.
I climb several rungs, making sure to stay below the WARNING label.
I slice and dice and chop the top off the hedge which has inhaled spring like a weightlifter doing anabolic steroids.
I watch clumps of sticks and leaves fall to the ground.
I watch as disheveled becomes manageable and out of control becomes curb appeal.
After 3 hours, I am covered from head to tow with a chunky dust of spring.
I am layered in grass and green bits of weed and leaf.
I am wearing a coat of allergens.
I step back and look at my yard.
I have conquered spring. I have taken an unkempt afro and made into something that’s ready for the clubs.
Spring is great.
And now that it has met the blade, it’s presentable and ready for company.
Life’s Crazy™