grass and philosophy

so today i mowed the grass. front yard and back yard. yeah, i counted that as my workout and i think i sweat so much my skin was hurting... the first time i mowed the grass here, i forgot about the "auto drive" feature on our lawn mower. so i mowed half of it pushing with every muscle in my body...and it was hard. and i felt stupid.

but today i remembered the auto drive, and i used it, and it was still a pretty hard job. i was pushing the mower along, probably only about a quarter of the job left to go, when i thought about how i was pushing the mower....and how different it looks from how N pushes the mower. when i push, my arms are long in front of me, strong, pushing. my back is slanted, pushing. my legs are far behind me, pushing. every damned part of me pushes the mower...even with the auto drive engaged. N...he does not do this. he stands straight and his arms are fairly relaxed. he looks more like he's pushing a baby buggy on a street than our mower through our thick grass on our uneven lawn. and it occurs to me that this is one of those moments in life that illustrates something that's pretty true. N and i do have these different postures in how we approach things. he's usually fairly relaxed and me, well, i tend to hunch down like a cro magnon ready to tackle whatever...not really, but i do tend to launch myself into whatever i do most wholly.

so i try to relax and adopt N's posture at the mower. and it's ok. but not even five minutes later, i find my body back in my own position. so i'm thinking, why am i doing this? this way hurts my neck, my back. why am i pushing so hard? so THAT made me think of labor. and it made me think how during labor is not the time to tell someone they are pushing all wrong, or too hard. (or if you do, you better be pretty fucking careful at how you do it, huh?) and it's also not the time to try to completely change the way you're doing something. i mean, i'll try to get myself to relax, even while mowing the yard. (although yesterday's yoga left my back so out of whack, i'm beginning to get a little discouraged in the mind/body/spirit peace department) but i'm also going to be gentle with myself...because I'M WORKING HERE... we all are. we're all working really hard on stuff and need to remember that. treat ourselves more kindly and gently and treat each other more kindly and gently.

last thing...N's on call tonight. we took him up some dinner, but there were just too many mamas getting ready to have babies for him to eat with us. so he just hugged us all really tightly. it was quite touching and emotional for a little bit. because we all just kind of knew how much he loved us. how much he wished he could spend some time with us. and how much he misses us. i guess it is easier to believe that he loves his job so much that he doesn't miss us when he's there. but tonight, it was so true, it makes me ache to remember it. but we are proud of him and we love him, too.

when we left, n said he didn't want to be a doctor when he grew up. i asked him what he wanted to do and he said be a teacher. i said they had a pretty good schedule. he said he wanted to teach snow boarding... (i am shaking my head here) crazy texas kid...

peace out