Where The Beautiful Grass Grows

(Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash)

You have a house. The house is not yours. You are renting it. It’s an apartment, actually. You can’t afford a house. But let’s pretend it’s a house, and you have a lawn, and it’s yours.

You are so happy to finally have a lawn. You can never tell if the grass is greener, so you keep watering your lawn. Until one day, you realize you’re suddenly out of water.

You politely ask your neighbors if they can spare some water. They can give you a glass, but you need more than a drop. Everyone else needs water for their lawns, and you understand.

You patiently wait for some rain that never comes and start getting nervous. You start digging holes in your lawn, trying to find a reservoir. Your lawn starts looking like a dried out mess and it’s becoming increasingly challenging to hide it.

You just start putting up fake flowers and astroturf, embarrassed and hoping no one else will notice how bad it got. But everyone knows.

You think, “Once I have some water, everyone will forgive me for having such a bad lawn. I’m really trying my best.”

You care so much about that lawn. You worked so hard to get it because you never had a lawn. It’s the only thing you ever wanted in your whole fucking life. You wanted to grow vegetables in it and feed the family you wanted to have and your whole community with it. Instead, you have a dried out fucking lawn and your neighbors know. It’s unsightly. No one wants that lawn in the neighborhood and they start blaming the person who has the shitty lawn for not taking care of it.

Everyone in the neighborhood has to have beautiful lawns, even if they’re fake. No one wants to see the dead lawn struggling to survive.

They might be paying someone else to tend to their lawn, have astroturf or use unnatural processes to just keep it going. They might put up a sign in their window about how much they love the earth, but use harmful pesticides. “Don’t tell anyone,” they say. You keep their secret. They don’t go to bat for you because you have a shitty, dried out lawn. You just couldn’t keep the sprinklers on.

Their husbands might take care of the lawn, but they don’t want to discuss that. They just keep turning on the sprinklers, using up their mountains of water, shooting you dirty looks as to why your lawn looks like shit.

You say, “I just need some water.”

“Go find it.”

You try to crawl across the lawn and realize to get the water you’re going to have to do so much that you don’t want to do. You might be offered polluted water or have to do unspeakable things to get the clean water. You wonder why it is so hard and why no one wants to just work together to make a community well.

“That’s life.”

The community wants to have a candid conversation about the importance of lawns, but not in a way that actually addresses the one to help your struggling lawn. There are other lawns in other communities to think about. Have you thought about those lawns? Maybe if you watered other lawns, people would water yours. You volunteer to water lawns, but your lawn is still dried out. But at least you helped some other lawns.

“But I thought we all wanted beautiful lawns? I thought we all wanted the same things in this community. It means we have to fight for it, right?”

No one wants to talk about it. Just keep the lawns watered, or move to a different neighborhood. Maybe one without lawns, just like the one you came from.

You call up your friends and ask if their lawns are OK. They don’t want to talk about it. Their lawns are a mess, too, but they don’t really know what to do. Some of your friends are outraged about the lawn situation, but are really hoping you’ll get your lawn in order. It’s embarrassing everyone and they’re worried they’re going to be next. “We’re all in this together.” Keep a smiling face.

You find a reserve of some polluted water and start seeing if weeds will grow in it. No one is happy you have weeds in your lawn or that you brought polluted water into the neighborhood. Can you buy a mower, too? You only have enough money to put towards someday having the water.

“Sorry, still trying to grow grass! Once I have vegetables, I’m going to sell them at the market! Maybe I’ll meet a nice farmer there and we can grow a beautiful garden in the front lawn. It will be so green and our kids can roll in the grass. I bought this house because I wanted our kids in the good school district because I already knew what the bad one was like. I wanted to give up everything so they had a fighting chance. I’m just trying to get my lawn in order, don’t you get it?’

After awhile, you stop caring about the community and tuning them out. You realize everyone wants beautiful lawns, but ultimately your lawn will never be as beautiful as theirs. Maybe you all wanted the same things, but they have their own weeds to pull and their own water to maintain.

You start watering your lawn and hope that it will grow in time to harvest something. You miss having flowers and vegetables. You miss eating. You miss laying in the grass and having picnics with your neighbors, inviting them over for wine and cheese. You all used to love doing that so much together.

Eventually you get a rainy day and you stand in it. You start crying. Your tears and the rain water the ground. You have to believe that the rain is going to come again because if you don’t, you’ll die, just like the lawn you always dreamed of.

Your neighbors will be relieved when the lawn is watered, but neither of you will forget that really bad year. It’s better not to talk about that bad year. The one where you couldn’t keep your lawn watered and embarrassed yourself in front of everyone. The one where you were weak and couldn’t hide it anymore. The one where you politely asked for water and decided to stop asking because it was easier to die with your lawn than face the shame of asking in the first place.

Maybe you’ll move, maybe your neighbors will. The grass will never quite be even. You just have to accept that your lawn will grow and there will sometimes be weeds in it. You’re OK with that. It was never about having a perfect lawn anyway. You just wanted the grass and the vegetables and a place to share the love of working so hard on the lawn you sacrificed everything to have because it was never given to you.

Someday the lawn won’t belong to you or your neighbors because it never belonged to anyone. The fake flowers and astroturf of your neighbors lawns will fade. Maybe the house won’t even be there, or it will be taken over by the weeds. Maybe a prairie will grow and vines will break down the house. You won’t be buried in your lawn, but it won’t matter. No one will remember the lawn or why you wanted it.

Still, you bury a little note in the ground.

It says, “This lawn was mine. I grew it. It was everything I ever wanted and I was so happy it was mine. It’s yours now. I grew it for you. Please take good care of it and make sure the next person does, too.”