Zen and the Art of Mowing

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open." - Muriel Rukeyser

Day 169. Before I list all the prerequisite qualifiers to this blog, let me first say that readers may want to skip this post. Just because I need to write something doesn't mean that others have to read it. I am pissed, and angry women aren't highly thought of in our society. It makes both genders squirmy. Men are allowed much wider perimeters when it comes to being mad.

I'm recalling a seminar I attended featuring Harriet Lerner, brilliant author of The Dance of Anger. She led the audience in an experiential exercise before she began to talk about her book. Dr. Lerner asked us to call out all the derogatory names for an angry woman that we could think of. The list covered three columns on her blackboard (this was in the mid-80's). She then asked us to call out derogatory names for an angry man. There was a long pause before someone shouted, "Son-of-a-bitch!" As Lerner wrote the words on the board, she noted mildly, "Interesting. The name isn't derogatory to the man himself. It blames his mother."

The qualifiers: I know that there are mindful, compassionate, considerate, dedicated males who work hard to advocate for women. I know that the sample size I am referencing this evening is relatively small, and I must be careful about to whom I generalize my experiences. I know that in my psychology practice, the women who are married to amazing men do not comprise my clientele; rather, I hear disproportionately about problematic relationships. I know that becoming a "man hater" contributes nothing useful toward gender equality and is a reversed replica of the sexism I loathe. Most importantly, I know (or strongly suspect) that any male who regularly reads this blog, including this post, most likely falls on the Pretty Cool Guy side of the equation. I offer my sincere gratitude to you. Gassho to you all.

Something infuriating and confusing and distressing has been unfolding for me in the past two months. It feels like when I put on my first pair of eye glasses and the green blobs on top of the trees turned out to be leaves. It feels like the threshold at which I became familiar enough with my son's rap music to discern the lyrics. It feels like the moment I grasped the concept of the normal curve in my first statistics class, and could suddenly calculate standard deviations. I'm talking about paradigm shifts. Those moments when things come into focus. Those breakthroughs when a baffling fog suddenly lifts and you view things with sunlit clarity. They never look the same again.

My shift has to do with male-female interactions. It's as though I abruptly became able to observe and experience a detailed subtext underlying the conversation. I've had glimmers of it before, however, now I am aware of a much more unconscious, insidious, and pervasive process. My hunch is that I've slammed headfirst into the patriarchy. Like carbon dioxide emissions, it is everywhere, permeating every facet of my being. There is an implicit, unconscious assumption - often on the part of both sexes - that the male version of reality is the Right one. The correct one. The superior one. The truer one. The best one. Unquestionably. Unequivocally. Irreversibly. It pisses me off. Because it isn't true.

This is a trivial and inadequate example, but it's the one bursting from my fingertips. The grass in my backyard got very high and very thick due to a sequence of events preventing myself or my son from mowing it. Contributing factors included rain at inopportune times and my difficulties with heat. Last week, I noticed a lawn service mowing my next door neighbors' yard. I asked for a card; the guy gave it to me; I phoned him and we arranged a day for him to mow. I then received a polite text saying the lawn was too high for his mowers. He provided a referral. I called that guy. Two days later, he hadn't called back. I asked the first guy for another referral. He gave me one. That guy called me back, but the moment he heard me say, "tall grass" he said he wouldn't be able to do it. He suggested another couple of services. They didn't return my calls.

I realize my difficulty finding someone to mow my lawn could be explained by the cliches regarding the caliber of people that run lawn services. It has also been very hot, it is late in the season, and mowing services are very busy. I get all that. What I don't get is the disproportionate number of women I see out mowing their own lawns. Perhaps all the guys are busy with their lawn businesses, where they are paid to mow.

I am building context for my epiphany this evening. I pulled into my driveway after work, and noticed my partner in the back yard. He had come to mow. He had the weed eater fired up, and was half-heartedly swiping at the jungle. He was clearly chagrined, apparently at my gross negligence and incompetence at yard maintenance. I had not asked him to come and mow. He said with absolute certainty that it would cost "three hundred and fifty dollars" to get someone to mow this yard (it's a fairly standard sized back yard; maybe a little bigger since the house was built in the 1950's). I found it amusing that he set his worth at mowing the lawn at $350; my price was going to be about $50.

I turned and walked into my garage. Put gas and oil into my mower. Raised all four wheels up as high as they would go. Attached the grass catcher. Wheeled the mower into the back yard. With a look of utter disdain, he pronounced, "You can't mow it with that. You'll have to rent a mower." I ignored him. Started the mower. Began to mimic what I watched my dad do with unruly yards four decades ago. Mow a tiny swatch at a time. Overlap, overlap, overlap. Lift the front wheels when the engine started to cut out. Mow a line, then go back over it. Tedious, boring, repetitive, sluggish, monotonous drudgery requiring patience, tenacity, perseverance and steadfastness. Thankless and tiring. Woman's work.

I was in my element. I kept thinking about zazen and how I can continue to sit on my cushion while my entire lower extremities go numb, the Monkeys chatter up a storm, and the minutes pass like leap years. I thought about giving birth to my nine-pound son - naturally - with no drugs, no epidural, because I didn't want my infant arriving in the world exposed to chemicals he didn't have a say about. I thought about the weeks and months I spent with him in the hospital when he was just over a year old. The weeks and months neither brother nor my father ever visited because it was "too hard" for them to see my baby hooked up to all those tubes and wires. I thought about driving by myself over 45 miles of mountain road when my son was 14 - not knowing if he was alive or dead - only that he had been flown off the ski slopes with a head injury and "might" still be at the hospital in Durango before he was flown to Grand Junction, where they had a Trauma One unit. I thought about dodging the wrath of an alcoholic dad. I thought about the dozens of guys willing to sexually exploit me while I lay frozen with trauma triggered from previous sexual abuse. Kind of puts mowing a tall lawn in perspective.

Women are strong. We are the vessels trusted by the universe to contain and sustain precious new life until it can survive outside of the womb. That takes around nine months. The universe assigned seed implantation to the males. That can be accomplished in seconds. Don't tell me a lawn can't be mowed when what you really mean is that it is going to be frickin hard work and you'd rather someone else do it. Don't tell me my methods are wrong simply because I don't do something the way you would. Don't ridicule my way if it takes longer, involves the cooperation and contribution of other women, and is accomplished with grit and determination rather than loud machinery. Don't expect me to buy that your truth is truer. Don't expect me to wait until you figure this out and perceive on your own that something needs to change - that the patriarchy will crumble as, one by one, women shift our paradigm.

I can't yet find my loving kindness on this matter. I keep hearing the words of Jesus on the cross when he exclaimed, "Father! Why hast thou forsaken me?" I write these words while a war wages within: doubting, fighting an urge to apologize and take it all back, fearing the repercussions of being an angry woman. I know this isn't about mowing. Something much more than grass needs to be cut. I'm just trying to find the right blade.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc