We have a big ass lawn. I know, I know. You’ve talked to my wife, right? She’s told you that I could make our lawn smaller by simply choosing not to make it so big. After all, our lawn is essentially a hayfield that preexisted building our house. So if I want a smaller lawn, I can simply choose to cut less grass. Easy fix, right? Not really. You see, the back lawn has two soccer nets that I put up when Chris and Dylan were still playing soccer. Though our two middle sons are rarely around to kick a ball, Jack uses the nets almost daily. Shrink the back lawn? Maybe in 2016 when Jack’s done with soccer (that’s the year he graduates from high school).
The front lawn? Well, there again, I mow a big patch of former hayfield along the driveway because Rene’ likes it that way: Her idea, not mine. And then there’s the big expanse to the east of the house where we store our firewood, a utility trailer, and my boat. That patch, which started as a buffer alongside the pasture, was also her idea. So for someone (Rene’) to tell another someone else (me) that the lawn is the size it is because it’s my choice, well, that’s only partially true.
The point of this is that, for me to go golfing on Saturday with Matt and Jack, I was up at oh-dark-thirty to mow all that grass. Under ideal conditions (once June’s rains have petered out) it’s a four hour job. Jack does the push mowing around Rene’s water gardens. I do the rest. I know, I know. You think he’s old enough to do some of the sit-down mowing, right? So do his brothers. So does his mom. He’ll get there. This summer. I promise. In the meantime, during June, I spend an average of six hours mowing, raking, and trimming. Saturday was no exception. I started at 7:00am. I was still at it when Matt and Lisa (our daughter-in-law) came at 10:00. I was still at it when Rene’ and Lisa left for the Park Point Art Fair at 10:30. I finally finished up around noon,. I was hot, tired, and sweaty. A cool dip in the Cloquet River, a ritual that Rene’ calls “predictable” awaited.
“Holy crap, this is cold,” Matt said as he stood in waist deep black water.
After a week of solid rain, the river is finally back to normal depth. The water flowing by our house comes off the bottom of Island Lake: a lake that is 90 feet deep at its deepest. The Island Lake dam is only a mile upstream from my house. There’s not enough time for the water from the lake to warm before it gets to our place. It’s cold: brook trout cold.
“Whimp. Duck under and rinse off all the slimy sweat,” I replied.
Matt, who just came back from a six mile run, complied.
“Holy shit.”
“Whimp.”
We ate lunch and then drove over to Proctor for a day of golf.
I’ll spare you what transpired on the golf course except to say this: Jack quit on every hole. Not actually quit, but he said, after every errant shot, that he would quit. He never really did pack it all in and go back to the club house, and we did get in all 18 holes, but it was a trying day for the lad, to say the least. On one particularly trying hole, as Matt and I were waiting for Jack to take his third or fourth shot off the tee, my six iron, a club Jack had borrowed from me, went soaring across the course against the blue summer sky.
I looked at Matt across the fairway.
“Hey Matt?”
“What?”
“See that performance?”
“Ya.”
“Best birth control ever invented.”
My eldest son laughed.
Back at the farmhouse with the too big lawn, we ate Kentucky Fried Chicken on the back patio and ice cream cake (in honor of Rene’s birthday, which is actually today) and watched goldfinches flit in and out of feeders. After the great deluge of the past week, I didn’t want a Saturday filled with sun (even if it also contained occasional flying golf clubs and long hours on a riding lawn mower) to end. But as dusk closed in, Matt and Lisa gathered up their dogs (they have four) and headed back to their house in Hibbing. Rene’ and I cleaned up and settled in to watch the 10:00 news.
It was dark. The dishes were done. The leftovers were in the fridge. Jack was downstairs playing video games. The television screen glowed in the great room of our house. Rene’ and I noticed the show taking place over our pasture at the same time.
“Do you see…?”
I interrupted my wife.
“I know.”
She was on our small back deck looking out across the lawn. There were a few dozen fireflies dancing across the newly mown grass against the black sky.
“Jack, come outside,” I said from the covered front porch of our house. “Rene’, wait until you see the pasture.”
Both Rene’ and Jack joined me.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I said in a whisper.
“Me neither,” my wife answered.
“Wow,” was all Jack could say.
It’s not an exaggaration to say that there were as many fireflies dancing against the great vault of the night as there are stars in the Milky Way. All across the uncut hay surrounding our house, a new hatch of the illuminated bugs rose and fell, flicked on and off, like a vast, miniature galaxy of distant, twinkling stars. We’ve always had fireflies over the field during the summer. But we’ve never had such a display: such a grand affirmation of beauty in our twenty-seven years of living on the river. The three of us stood along the railing and watched the waltz of light until the mosquitoes, another of the “gifts” of summer, found us.
Peace.
Mark
