My lawn — and I use the term loosely — is a disaster. It is a brutal mix of weeds and dirt, with a sprinkling of grass, that has started to test the limits of my property-owning patience and, frankly, my marital status. Upon returning from a recent morning walk, my wife begged me to ‘fix it’. I assured her I would. But the unspoken truth that hung between us like moss from the branches overhanging our front yard, is that I didn’t know how.
Having failed in the past to properly seed and grow a decent lawn, and knowing that I have two thumbs that are absolutely black when it comes to anything green, I did today what struck me as the wisest thing I could do: I texted Tim.
Tim is many things: he’s a friend, a university Athletic Director, my son’s basketball coach, and a helluva a cook. He’s also a man whose front lawn looks like it is part of the Augusta National Golf Club. Simply stated, the man could grow grass in a Jersey City sandlot.
I reach Tim as he is finishing a Covid-19 era grocery store run. I explain my quandary and he walks me through the steps to short-term lawn improvement. As we are talking he also manages to sneak up on me. “I’m out front looking at your lawn,” he says through the phone. Sure enough, I see his truck parked out front and step outside to meet him at the edge of my yard and in comical unison — two men with arms akimbo, nodding seriously — we examine the paltry patches of green that sit like tiny islands amidst the sea of brown that is my front lawn.
Good friends show up. That is the extent of what I know about meaningful friendships and what defines these relationships.
But in the COVID-19 period the definitions of all relationships, and indeed he boundaries that we live within, are being redefined on a daily basis. Often not in good or positive ways. I was struck hard by the way New York Governor Andrew Cuomo bluntly put it the other day during one of his televised COVID-19 press conferences. He said that this unprecedented period has brought out the best and the worst in people. Then, in his gunslinger-of-a-governor style, noted that some people who he thought would rise to the challenges they face have “crumbled” while others, who he did not expect to meet the crisis head-on, let lone thrive during this COVIDian chaos, have done just the opposite: they’ve shown themselves to be superstars.
As an old basketball chum of mine likes to say, “Give me 20 minutes on a sports court with someone and I will tell you what they are really like.” In today’s parlance, Cuomo or Dr. Anthony Fauci might say, ‘Give me 20 minutes in a heated political meeting or ER room and I will tell you what a person is really like.’ A lot of pressure produces coal; it can also, over even more time, produce diamonds.
So what will I be after COVID-19 passes? What will you be? And what will your son or daughter or nephew or niece be after all this pandemic pandemonium shakes out and we get back to normal — or whatever passes for our ‘new normal’? It’s a tough question. And one worth considering closely, and personally.
My buddy Tim tells me, as he leans into his rake and starts to haul back some of the layers of leaves and weeds from my front yard, that a trip to the grocery store has gone from being a leisurely and somewhat creative outing for him to a near-contact sport with old women hollering at people going the wrong way down aisles and flour-hungry bakers elbowing each other aside for the last 10-pound bag of unbleached white gold.
These days my wife and I are trying to keep our two boys (Jacob, 16, and Pete, 13) focused on the things that matter. And we are trying to preserve and promote a sense of warmth in our home that defies the insanity that invariably leaks in through the TV and social media. This doesn’t mean we are immune to badness; it just means we are trying to make ourselves and our kids better, in small ways, through this bad time.
We’ve tried to help our boys see the big picture and the small picture, and appreciate the difference. The importance of giving and getting loaves of fresh bread to those we love but don’t often see these days. The joy of celebrating their grandfather’s recent and miraculous diagnosis of “cancer in remission” by driving to the apartment building where my Greek in-laws live and holding up signs of “Congratulations!” and “We Love You, Papou!” outside their window. And the importance of believing that love will triumph over the evil that was recently perpetrated by a gunman who turned Nova Scotia (“Canada’s ocean playground”, as our quaint license plates read) into the site of the largest mass shooting in Canadian history.
So today as my youngest son was supposed to be tackling his school-work, I let him join Tim and me in the front yard. (Tim is his basketball coach and a bit of a hero to my boy). Pete gladly got down on his hands-and-knees and helped weed the front yard for an hour, quietly enjoying the sun on his cheeks and the earth between his fingers. Occasionally, we three gardeners exchanged a comment or a funny story, but mostly we just dug in and happily got the job done. By the time we stood up and stood back, the front yard was starting to look better; not great, but better. Before I could properly thank Tim, he was back in his truck and headed home to his lovely wife and two great kids.
I went inside and typed him a text, saying how grateful I was for his help. But it didn’t seem like quite enough for a man who’d just improved, immeasurably, both my standing with my wife and with my neighbours. I pulled the bread machine out and loaded in the ingredients for a pizza dough.
Later, Pete and I will wrap the dough in a nice, clean cloth and jump on our bicycles and ride over to Tim’s house to drop off a small heap of happiness on his porch. It’s this sort of back-and-forth that has become so important in these strange days; a time when we are all struggling to see what each of us will look like, up close, after having spent so many moments standing — and shopping and gardening — six feet apart.
-DN