Rough math tells me I’ve mowed our lawn 1,300 times. Rough, because I’m words not numbers. Twice a week, six months a year for 25½ years. I know every divot and high spot. I know this lawn’s strengths and weaknesses. Encroaching Bermuda grass remains my nemesis. If we weren’t moving, Napalm would be my next option.
Transitioned from a rider to a push mower when I reached the stage in life where it makes sense to walk instead of ride. I haven’t counted the steps, but it’s a corner lot. My legs feel it when I get done, which is sort of the point.
It’s a small house. Three bedrooms, two of which we converted to his and hers offices when the pandemic hit.
In 1998, when we moved in, my son was 13, living with his mom in Lawrence and with us every other weekend. One of my most cherished keepsakes is a photo of him lounging on the couch in a way only teenagers can, reading my favorite book (Ball Four by Jim Bouton). In high school, he earned some scratch painting interior walls in this house. Designer textured paint in two, forest green in the one that would become my office. I’m there now, writing this column. A quarter century of memories are washing over me.
Did some remodeling shortly after we bought it, including a backyard fence for the dogs. We’ve had four in 25 years, two at a time. Another remodel round in 2019, updating the kitchen, new paint in the living and dining rooms, new carpeting, furniture and a new deck. We described 2019 as “the year of home improvement.”
Outside is where we’ve really gone to town. Several rounds of landscaping. When we moved in, it was nothing for me to spend a weekend mulching the flower and landscaping beds. Twenty-five years later, I don’t move that fast, so river rock supplanted mulch. Tore down a half-dozen trees over the years, planted a few more.
You can count the times we went to the basement during tornado warnings on one hand. Most of the time, like true Kansans, we’d scan the skies from the deck.
I’ll miss our ginormous cottonwood tree. I don’t know how old it is, but the house was built in 1970 to accommodate it. In the fall, cottonwood leaves cover half our corner lot.
My wife grew up in the country and those roots only seem to grow deeper with time. About a year ago we got serious about buying land and building a house. Within six months the cost-benefit analysis began to skew heavy on the cost, light on the benefit and we transitioned from building to buying.
Found one, high atop a Flint Hill with vistas those of us from this area dream of and aspire to, but that’s another column, when we move later this summer.
I will miss this house and this ‘hood. Won’t miss the critters. One municipal cultural evolution data point over 25 years is the advance of livestock and poultry into erstwhile critter-less residential developments. Our neighbor to the south has a rooster, who does what roosters do early in the morning. Another neighbor has chickens, ducks, goats and sheep. You’ve not lived until you’ve been awoken at oh dark thirty by the death bleatings of a goat getting devoured by a coyote.
We have to move to the country to get away from the farm animals.
Our days here are numbered. Don’t ask me how many (words, not numbers), but I intend to spend them traveling back in time, remembering 25 years of happiness and joy, sorrow and heartbreak, building a life in this home.
I added value to a mundane chore like mowing the lawn by turning it into a ritual for ideation. It’s where I framed up this column. Rough math tells me I’ll only mow this lawn eight or ten more times, then I’ll be afforded the privilege of creating new rituals, in a new home.
Mike Matson’s column appears every other Saturday in The Mercury. Follow his writings at mikematson.com
