Thirty-four summers ago, one of the neighborhood gardeners pulled up in front our house in a rusted, olive-green old truck, and flapped down the back plank of a door. I watched as he unloaded a lawn mower, a rake, and an assortment of collecting cans and bins. But I was transported to a favorite childhood vacation spent on a farm. I imagined a herd of pigs squawking down the ramp, onto a stretch of farm. He had come to mow the grass in front of our newly acquired ranch house.

My husband and I hired this gardener who we came to call Mr. Ealey, after a fight between us, oddly enough, over who WOULD mow the grass. I yearned to after many years missing fond summers in the country, and my husband wanted to just as much, excited we finally had our own home. But then allergies kicked in. Enter Mr. Ealey.

He’s bent over now, I suppose after years of mowing. But he’s entitled. He told me he just turned 80. He speaks in a soft, unhurried voice, in a somewhat southern drawl, with long drawn-out explanations, of tales of what he used to do, and what used to be. But I’m usually one foot out the door, blurting, “I’m late.”
But also in that moment, I clearly see the contrast between our two lives: mine, the modern-day treadmill rushing off to accomplish – whatever. And his, a step back to the olden days, to a pre-pesticide farm, unhurried, simpler times, a more connected-with-friends-and-neighbors kind of world.

But as I reject his offer of conversation, I have a yearning to revisit those days – a timeless sitting on the wood front porch, doing nothing, but sit, and rock. He says, “That’s okay, you go ahead. I got lots of lawns to do before dark, anyhow.”

I leave several cups of water on the no-longer-sun-drenched porch; the sun has shifted lower now in the sky. We part.

But also in that moment, in a corner of my mind, I have a glimpse that the day I’m ready to sit and be timeless with him on the wood front porch, and do nothing but talk… and rock, he may not be there to sit with me.