Back Yard Therapy

So after a frustrating day at work, I was mowing my lawn at home as the sun went down last night. Lizzy, my 7 year old, was out on the patio eating M&Ms and watching me. Soon she moved to the swingset. Back and forth and back and forth she went, while I went back and forth and back and forth over the much-too-long lawn. As I went, I thought of clever or childish or vengeful or straightforward ways to communicate my work frustration to my supervisors (all the while knowing none of those expressions would ever be shared). Camel backs and straws, pay commensurate with headaches--that sort of thing.

I mowed over a part of a zucchini plant that was in my way. I don't like zucchini anyway. Then there were a couple branches of raspberry bushes. They were sticking out into the grass where they shouldn't have been. I got out the weed killer and started spraying unwelcome growth in the lawn and in border areas. Lizzy, still swinging, asked, "Why are you killing the weeds? Why don't you find somewhere that they like weeds and pick our weeds out of the ground and take them to that place?"

This is our little environmentalist. When we found termites in our house she was dismayed to learn of our plans to kill them. Instead, she thought we should make a wood pile somewhere outside and encourage the termites to go eat the wood pile instead of our house. They're part of creation, after all, and they just need something to eat. Poor little termites. We joked about making a little sign that said, "Wood pile, this way." We killed them anyway. Some guys came and drilled holes in our concrete and pumped all sorts of poison into the ground. Three times.

Anyway, as I'm spraying weeds, Lizzy says, "Wanna come swing with me?" So I finish my spraying, put the sprayer on the patio, and go sit on the hard plastic swings that are too narrow for adult hind ends. And we swing. The light is receding from the sky overhead. The colors turning to deeper shades of blue, a nice gradation from light blue in the west to deep blue over head. The mountains to the east are getting darker.

Lizzy is singing, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." (Really--those are the words she was singing.) And she says, "Want to sing this with me? You sing three blah blahs and then you say names of things that are kind of similar. Like this: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mountains, clouds, trees, grass. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Stars, moon, planets, sun."

So I join in and we're singing the blah blah song as we swing on ever-more-painful swings. I switch to the two-person glider swing, which is more comfortable. Lizzy changes the song. "So after you say the names of things, then you say what category they are in. Like this: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mountains, clouds, trees: Nature." And on we go, each singing our own version of the blah blah song. I come up with categories like "space" and "things in our yard" and "parts of our house."

Since I'm thinking of my own words and categories, I'm only half-listening, at best, to Lizzy's words. So I don't notice when she sings "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sun, lightbulb, furnace, fire..." But I do notice that there is a long pause. She stopped after that list of related items, unsure what to call the list.

After my song continues solo for some time, she finally names her category: "Sources of heat and energy," she intones in her little 7-year-old voice. And I bust up. And she laughs. And there we are laughing and swinging under a dark-blue gradient sky, and I look up and see one bright, clear, bluish star--a planet, I think--right overhead. And we swing and sing blah blahs into the night. And never once do I include "frustrating job" in my categories.