Grass and purgatory

I don't know when the last time we cut the back lawn was, but judging from it's deep, jungle-like thickness this afternoon, I'm thinking it's been a few weeks. If I'm not mistaken, the last time was when My Beloved ran over a mouse.

Good times.

Anyway, it's been too rainy or we've been too busy lately and it just got kind of forgotten, my precious lawn. But today felt like a good day to go out and restore it to its former beauty. I needed an escape - a way of blowing off some restless energy that didn't involve researching infertility or brooding about my broken parts. Or thinking about Thomas.

It was very therapeutic. Cutting beautiful, kelly green swaths out of the jungle with each pass of the mower made me feel productive and useful. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was illuminating the grass in a way that always takes my breath away and, strangely, reminds me of home.

It was meditative and comforting. And just destructive and loud enough to satisfy the Clomid-driven beast within.

Because it's been so long - and because we have an ancient, hand-me-down mower without a bag - the mulch blanketed the newly cut grass in a dangerously heavy layer. It would have looked awful if I left it and, even worse, it would have killed the grass beneath it. So I found myself re-mowing the lawn in an attempt to mulch the mulch.

I kind of did it without thinking, lost in my meditative grass cutting trance, but eventually I realized what I was doing - and that I'd been doing it for a while. And I very briefly wondered if at some point during the day I'd died and that this endless grass cutting exercise was actually purgatory. Not unpleasant, in fact kind of satisfying, but still repetitive, dirty work.

I usually picture purgatory as a big, white room with small white benches all around its perimeter. Souls waiting for the call hang out there chatting and playing tic-tac-toe. It's kind of boring, but comfortable enough.

I bet purgatory has its own flip flopping attendant who calls out the names of those waiting in a maddeningly random order.

Hmmm. Maybe I died yesterday...