Dismantling the Hammock
Today there were leaves all over the place. It's been this way for a couple weeks. Leaves, mostly maple from the big old tree behind my house, piled up in every damn nook and cranny around the house, the planters, the driveway, the corners.
I had called Mike D., who is absolutely lousy with directions (and I don't see how, even reading this, he could deny it or would want to), but who also has his own landscaping business, to come clean up my yard. I can afford to pay someone to do this chore, which I myself do not miss, though a small, idyllic voice in me was mildy disappointed that I didn't bust out the rake and leaf bags and work up some blisters for old time's sake. Mike was en route and there were two things I needed to clean up myself in the back yard before he arrived: the garden hose and sprinkler, and the hammock.
The hammock is a green and white rope net threaded and knotted through wooden laths at either end. My ex-wife ordered it from Martha Stewart or L.L. Bean a few years ago and one or both of us would set it up every summer and take down every fall. Now it was just another remnant she'd abandoned, too focused on her new life to care about it, like many other things she'd left. I calmly unhooked the hammock net's hooks from the stand poles, folding it in half and carrying it into the shed where I placed it against a wall by the door. I dismantled the stand a piece at a time, carrying the pole uprights and the base pieces one at a time into the shed and leaning them against the same spot. The whole time I thought of what I was doing as a private ritual dedicated to sealing the past behind me, dismantling another physical symbol of the marriage. Next time I put that thing together, if I ever do, it will be as a single guy, ex-husband, divorced man; just some guy with a an old green and white hammock he got somewhere.
Mike called me, lost in Natick, going the wrong way on Rte. 9. Thank God for cellphones and divine intervention: he did finally find my place. I had said a little prayer to help him find the place. I wondered if it helped, not caring if it did or not as long as he made it.
We'd never met before, but we hit it off. He was wearing a Saint Anselm College sweat shirt, my nourishing mother, but it turns out he'd never been there himself. We settled on a price for the job. We talked for a few minutes about divorce, property rights and the institution of marriage before he got down to blasting leaves into big piles with a massive leaf blower while the worker he'd brought raked up a few patches of leaves the old fashioned way.
I had called Mike D., who is absolutely lousy with directions (and I don't see how, even reading this, he could deny it or would want to), but who also has his own landscaping business, to come clean up my yard. I can afford to pay someone to do this chore, which I myself do not miss, though a small, idyllic voice in me was mildy disappointed that I didn't bust out the rake and leaf bags and work up some blisters for old time's sake. Mike was en route and there were two things I needed to clean up myself in the back yard before he arrived: the garden hose and sprinkler, and the hammock.
The hammock is a green and white rope net threaded and knotted through wooden laths at either end. My ex-wife ordered it from Martha Stewart or L.L. Bean a few years ago and one or both of us would set it up every summer and take down every fall. Now it was just another remnant she'd abandoned, too focused on her new life to care about it, like many other things she'd left. I calmly unhooked the hammock net's hooks from the stand poles, folding it in half and carrying it into the shed where I placed it against a wall by the door. I dismantled the stand a piece at a time, carrying the pole uprights and the base pieces one at a time into the shed and leaning them against the same spot. The whole time I thought of what I was doing as a private ritual dedicated to sealing the past behind me, dismantling another physical symbol of the marriage. Next time I put that thing together, if I ever do, it will be as a single guy, ex-husband, divorced man; just some guy with a an old green and white hammock he got somewhere.
Mike called me, lost in Natick, going the wrong way on Rte. 9. Thank God for cellphones and divine intervention: he did finally find my place. I had said a little prayer to help him find the place. I wondered if it helped, not caring if it did or not as long as he made it.
We'd never met before, but we hit it off. He was wearing a Saint Anselm College sweat shirt, my nourishing mother, but it turns out he'd never been there himself. We settled on a price for the job. We talked for a few minutes about divorce, property rights and the institution of marriage before he got down to blasting leaves into big piles with a massive leaf blower while the worker he'd brought raked up a few patches of leaves the old fashioned way.
posted by Scott M. Stirling | 9:13 PM
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