Softly the leaves on the burning bush began to turn. In my mind I pictured it going red then dropping like confetti, like broken glass. No car alarms or sirens in the suburbs, just the sound of our lawn sprinkler spritzing. I followed its slow, steady arc across the yard.

I never watered the grass and only did this patch in the front because mom was coming from Germany, the first time in a while. It drove me to extreme lengths in the yard, to manic weeding and pruning, to make everything look perfect. A fool’s errand.

But I felt satisfied in the early mornings or dusk before bed, wandering the edges of the property where I’d weeded and barked all the beds and now it looked clean and peaceful in the fading light. The yard was a metaphor—as was the house—for the life I wanted to live, weed free.

But it was a fool’s errand because blink, and the weeds returned. The grass was gaining on the berm, the roses looked fucked, the daisies were flopping over and needed retied. The foxglove was all spent. Moss had taken over a lot of the lawn but I was glad for that, I knew better than to compete with moss in the Pacific Northwest. And I liked the spongey feel underfoot.

I was bitten and achy but I felt strong from all the digging and raking. It was a bad time to let my hair go long with the upcoming job interviews but I smoothed it back and you couldn’t tell on camera.

I would be glad to go into the office I said but most of the jobs were listed as 100% remote and I was tired of being remote. At the same time I probably loved it, and couldn’t go back to the commute. I worked out of our bedroom and started burrowing in there, napping between meetings, napping after baths, lounging in the La-Z-Boy, playing video games before bed.

Summers in the Northwest are funny because you realize how different it’s going to be in a few months and that makes summers both wondrous and bittersweet. And the summers are a metaphor for life, as are the days and the sunsets and all. The strange wisdom in the knowledge that everything ends.

For me it was a mixture of loss and abundance and I felt uplifted by it, propelled to get out and live it up. Time was gaining on us like that grass on the berm. I cut it back with the spade but nature would win in the end. And then it would go back to looking the way it did before. And there would be some peace in that return.

Categories: prose, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, pacific northwest