We live in a very pretty neighborhood of tree-lined hilly streets, upon which acorns fall and bikers coast and squirrels do double-takes. Children in back-packs hike up and down the sidewalks crunching through the leaves; and people of all ages tend their flower gardens and fill bird-feeders and prepare jack-o-lanterns amongst tasteful arrangements of cornstalks and hay bales.
My family has, by far, the most hideous front yard in the neighborhood.
At any moment I expect to hear a brisk knock on the door from representatives of the neighborhood improvement association, giving us 48 hours to pack up and leave town. “We don’t want trouble,” they will say. “We just need you to go.”
For many years, my husband Donny struggled to raise—and did raise—pleasant crops of grass. The grass was never abundant, as the shade from the massive Tulip Poplar tree screened out the sunlight, but the yard was green and soft and shiny. I remember this. You could, like, sit on the grass in the front yard. You could lie back on the grass and look at the sky. Bald spots got filled in with clover and wild greenery and it grew long enough that a lawn-mower left nice back-and-forth stripes. It looked like the other yards: grass, hedges, brick walk-way. A light game of badminton left plastic birdies dangling on the grass.
Sometime this summer, after the arrival of Child Number Eight and Child Number Nine, the yard took a bad turn. The new boys brought the soccer-playing cohort to at least seven children on a slow day. Someone dragged the portable soccer goals up the driveway and nailed them into the front yard. The stampede of cleated feet ground out the clover. Over a period of about three weeks, the lawn surrendered and died. Georgia has been parched by an historic drought this year, so the soccer players raised dust like broncos kicking up dirt at a rodeo. Finally only thin sideburns of old dusty grass stood at the far sides of the yard, as if someone were sketching a rectangle using green crayon. The solid middle of the rectangle was brown. We had created, in our very own midtown Atlanta neighborhood, a Third World soccer field.
I didn’t realize how far we’d declined from neighborhood standards until my son Lee arrived home a few days ago for fall break. Lee’s not a big lover of landscaping. He’s probably never even noticed landscaping before. But he got out of the car from the airport, glanced left, and said, “Oh my God.”
Then, finally, a long-prayed-for rain arrived. It rained yesterday, really rained. Long grey hard rain. A thrill ran through the house. It used to rain nearly every afternoon of every summer day. Atlanta used to have a rainy season. Then the heavens dried up. The sky was as hot and dry this past summer as my front yard. So yesterday’s rain—and running to roll up the car windows, and running to park the bikes under the porch, and realizing that team soccer practice was cancelled, and turning on lamps in the livingroom—felt new. Rain! Children tore out of the house to look at it, to look straight up and feel it. The children ran out, skidded across the new slick mud of the front yard, and fell down. This was funny. This had to be repeated. Look! If you took a running start, you could slide sideways in the mud and leave a trail. Better barefoot. Better, for boys, without shirts. Better barefoot, no shirts, and wearing too-small raincoats. Better playing soccer in the mud, in the pouring rain. Better yet: dodgeball. Dodgeball with a dripping mud-covered soccer ball that hit the victim with a momentous whomp. Better still: hold umbrellas, tap-dance barefoot in the mud, dodge the mud-ball, then pick it up and hurl the dripping thing. Rain and mud coated the children. I flew about inside gathering towels. “What is this like?” I thought happily. “Oh! It’s like a snow day!” Years ago, when my oldest kids were little, we could expect at least one school-cancelling Snow Day a year. The snow usually melted by mid-afternoon, with temperatures returning to the 50s, but for a few uncanny morning hours every year, we were transported to a different world, a Northern world of frozen branches and white yards.
Here, finally, after a season of drought, we had a Rain Day.
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| in the downpour |
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| mud soccer |
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| Yosef |
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| Helen playing dodgeball |
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| Daniel |
The kids now were whooping, screaming, dancing, and melting with mud. They were one with the mud. They WERE the mud. Then, abruptly, they wanted to take showers. “Whoa! Whoa! Wait!” I yelled, trying to block them from stampeding through the house. “You come in through the BASEMENT door, take off your clothes at the DOOR, and use the BASEMENT shower.” Despite these helpful tips, many waited till my back was turn to squeeze past the front door and up the stairs, leaving footprints unique in their size and depth.
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| Jesse |
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| Lee |
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| Lee mud-sliding |
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| Lily |
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| Lily winning dodgeball |
The front yard today, in the lingering drizzle, looks like a drenched sheet of paper upon which a preschooler finger-painted, smearing all the colors together into one sickening yellowish-brown. The yard is streaked and curlicued. A blown umbrella sits inside-out in the puddles. The yard is beyond hideous.
And yet—this is true—when I just went outside to survey the damage to our reputation and to the neighborhood’s appeal, I spotted, rejuvenated by the rain, stirred up in the mud-stew, a few pale-green hopeful tendrils of new grass.
