Burying Dad
I thought I was done. I considered pulling weeds and mowing grass part of the past when I left for college. "This is all yours now," my father exclaimed a few weeks before he died, referring to his 100-year-old farmhouse and its 2.5-acre lawn. I noticed, but didn’t fully comprehend, the tinge of gleeful irony he said that with. Having invested so many hours caretaking the structure and its grounds, I do now. My father knew the burden he was conveying; a first-time homeowner, I didn't. I should probably hire landscaping help but, besides being frugal, feel a compulsion to do it myself, like it's part of what I need to do to earn ownership. Many of my professional peers have risen from positions of doing to managing. Their labor is focused on oversight and responsibility. They're over being in the weeds, liberated. I've yet to make that transition and sometimes feel like I've been held back a grade at school. Much more than property and wealth is going to be conveyed between generations in the coming years, a larger legacy of the impacts incurred in generating everything that scaffolds my quality of life. I didn't get into sustainability issues to tip any existential scales, but rather because I found those topics more meaningful than more traditional design pursuits. The carbon impact of my large, "zero turn" mower isn't lost on me. However, riding it for the 1.5hrs it takes to mow my grass all I usually think about is with what I could start replacing this large lawn my father wanted. I derive satisfaction from physical effort, from the minutiae of client projects, from accepting what's been given while considering and working toward what could be.
