Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

Academic Exodus

When I first got up this morning I slowly began piecing together an entry to record our Beltane festivities (I always resize, sharpen and upload pictures to Flickr first, then prep the images with all of the necessary coding within a drafted entry before HI-LAR-R-IOUS commentary is even added), but the closer I got to writing the more I began glancing out the window.

("THE SUN, IT'S STILL THERE, RIGHT? RIGHT? IT'S NOT GETTING TOO OVERCAST, IS IT? NO, PHEW, I GOT SOME MORE TIME. I'LL HAVE ANOTHER CUP OF TEA AND TRY TO GET INTO THE MINDSET OF WRITING SOMETHING. WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, LET ME CHECK TO MAKE SURE THE SUN'S STILL UNOBSTRUCTED AGAIN...")

There's no point in fighting the inevitable; I'm forgoing writing, again, so I can work outside in the dirtyard. (I've been allowed a narrow stretch of land hugging the edge of the sidewalk which I've been digging up to loosen the earth, mix in manure and sift out any rocks, pebbles and debris.) Christ only knows how long this decent patch of weather is going to last, so I'm going to make the most of it and resunburn my already sunburned ass. (LITERALLY, I HAVE A BELLY UP RED CRESCENT JUST ABOVE MY ASS STRETCHING FROM HIP TO HIP.)

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Yesterday the majority of garden work happened in the backyard, but I'll cover that later since I still need to take pictures of the progress. (OH, WE PLANTED THREE THREES, CREATED A PEA POLE TEPEE, RE-POTTED A GIFTED PLANT, PLANTED SOME VEGETABLES AND WATERED, WATERED, WATERED.) Just before work began I took a few minutes to snap pictures of my favorite clump of lilies of the valley that still grace the garden in the back.

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Growing up my best friend was N who lived on the OTHER side of the border. (Our final move away from Chicago was to a tiny village in IL just a mile off the WI border. N and her family lived on a small farm in WI just a mile off the IL border. If the state line hadn't divided us we would've gone to the same elementary and high school; that's how short the distance was between our respective homes.)

As boring as it must've been for her we always played at her house. (DUDE, SHE LIVED ON A //FARM// THAT BACKED INTO CORN FIELDS AND MIDWESTERN HEDGEROWS.) And "playing" usually involved the great outdoors, long walks across tilled fields (we adhered to the strict "WE CAN GO WHEREVER WE WANT PROVIDED WE NEVER, EVER CROSS AN ASPHALT ROAD" code of rural children) and an insane amount of mud. (I'M NOT A SEX PIG FOR NOTHING.)

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As a child you live in two alternate realities simultaneously - the academic year and the natural, seasonal year. When you're young the two move in synch, allowing you to coexist in separate realities. With one foot in each world you're able to see, when combined, how the parallel existences compliment one another. When the natural world was in transition, something was happening in school. Significant dates in school usually marked a period of metamorphosis in the cycle of the seasons.

When the first lilies of the valley appeared beneath the rolling, hunched branches of old trees (where sunlight dappled instead of shined) we knew that soon - very soon - school would be over and we'd be released into the freedom the budding Midwestern summer. When the first of the bramble berries were ripe we weren't captives of the academic year; we were ruled by the law and order of the natural world bursting with life around us. (Until the last week of August when, once again, we relearned how to straddle both worlds; just like riding a bike, but you begin to resent and loathe the bike more and more the older you get.)

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I'm almost thirty now (LORD JESUS IN HEAVEN, THAT HAPPENS NEXT YEAR) and Sunday evenings still make me moody; Friday afternoons still elate me. And the sight of lilies of the valley? They still look like the promise of freedom.

Now, though, I don't need a fistful of white, silent bells as a reminder of the exodus to come. (This ass sauntered out of Egypt long, long ago.) When you're no longer ruled by the academic year you don't need to pick flowers to celebrate the death of another school year. You can enjoy them, sitting back, remembering how they were foraged long ago as a primitive ritual of prayer and hope for the end that was so near.

(Can you still remember what the last day(s) of elementary school felt like? As long as there are lilies of the valley growing in shaded seclusion I'll never forget.)

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Last summer Mr. Awesome (my father-in-law, just in case you two haven't been formally introduced) "cleaned out" the backyard. In doing so he chopped down the majority of the foliage that provided a natural backdrop of privacy between the backyard/garden and the street (when healthy and thick it provides amble cover for me to float around the tiny space nude), killed off whatever grass remained (a backyard with no lawn to match the front which is nothing but dirt), filled in almost every empty space with trees and shrugs in plastic bags, threw out Spring bulbs that Italics had bought me as a gift (I managed to enjoy them for one season before he raided my containers and pots, throwing away plants, bulbs and trees without notifying or asking me) and dug up and discarded the majority of the lilies of the valley that were planted nearly twenty years ago.

The clump of the lilies of the valley above are the only ones that survived the GREAT GARDEN HOLOCAUST OF 2008. My heart broke, as stupid as it sounds, to see everything ripped out, torn up and, without even a thought of saving to replant later, unceremoniously thrown out. But, technically, it isn't my garden, so decisions aren't made democratically amongst the four adults who live and, supposedly, share communal areas.

(Christ, I didn't even have the right to SAVE MY OWN PLANTS - SOME OF WHICH WERE GIFTS ITALICS BOUGHT ME - LET ALONE PUT MY FOOT DOWN AND SAY "NO, YOU CAN'T USE WEED KILLER TO KILL THE LAST OF THE GRASS IN THE BACKYARD". Sometimes I get the feeling that all my in-laws ever want to hear from me is "I MADE YOU GUYS DINNER" and "I JUST FINISHED CLEANING XXX" and if I only stayed in those two areas - cooking and cleaning for everyone - we wouldn't have any problems. Unfortunately, this isn't a fairytale and I ain't no fucking Cinderella.)