When I was young we lived on a hobby farm with a lot of property. It was a charming house with some outbuildings and kennel that my parents built. We had many acres of woods, tons of grassy space near the house and a river running behind our property. I’m not entirely sure how big the grassy space was exactly, because, let’s face it, kids don’t care about property size. We really only start to care about those things as we get older and start wanting to buy a house with property… But it was a lot of grass.
We kids rarely mowed the lawn. That was something Mom did. She enjoyed it–or at least that’s what I remember thinking. There came a point in our lives that we were allowed to learn how to mow that grass and I remember thinking that was so cool. It was a right of passage into being a teenager or something. Either way, I thought it was so awesome to be able to mow that lawn. Which is why, now, as an adult I’m happy to mow our own lawn. Plus I just love the satisfaction of straight lines and a tidy lawn when I’m done. It’s so pretty. And I get the added bonus of getting to do it all over again in a few days! Oh, and of course, don’t forget the exercise that comes along with it.
But when we were younger and couldn’t mow yet, I vividly recall chasing my Mom or Dad around the back yard as they rode the riding lawn mower. Each swipe back and forth with the mower would create a new exciting path through the grass that we could chase each other down. Of course, we had to be careful not to get to close, or you could get in trouble… but that didn’t stop us from running along those magical paths, letting or imaginations run wild. It was a path to the magical kingdom. Or a path through a scary jungle with animals lurking on every side. Or a path that was filled with fish so we had to swim carefully around them.
Today as I mowed the lawn Chloe asked me to make some paths through the grass. At first I said no. It would ruin my beautiful straight lines I had been working so hard on. But then I remembered my childhood paths through the grass and I decided my lines weren’t as important. So I zigzagged swoopy lines up and down the grass in crazy designs. And while I finished mowing the grass, slowly eating away at those magical paths as I went, the kids ran and played up and down laughing and running back and forth. It made me smile.
Happy with their own paths through the grass.
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