Craftsman

In the morning I gave up my usual walk and instead mowed Grandpa’s lawn, using Rosemary’s electric mower and three long power cords. The grass was thick and tall, and it took me four hours. Each bit had to be gone over twice, and much moving of power cords was involved.

For the past two weeks, there have been nearly daily discussions about the yard (the man who last mowed hadn’t return numerous phone calls). Mike and Rosemary fretted, Grandpa fretted, but no one could agree on a solution….

In the evening, at Rosemary’s, we had an impromptu meeting about what to do about the lawn going forward. The electric mower didn’t seem a long-term solution. Rosemary had talked with Grandpa earlier in the day. “He said to go out and buy a new push mower, a gas one,” she told us. There’s a rider mower in the lower garage, but it’s in pieces, as he’d been the midst of a repair the week he fell and broke his hip. I suggested we call Sears (the rider mower is a Craftsman) and have someone come out and fix it. Mike said he could take care of that.

Rosemary said, “But Dad thinks he’s going to fix it himself when he gets home. He wants me to get a railing put up on those steps down to the garage. He told me to call the guy who did the railing in the bathroom, but he can’t remember his name…. It’s probably written down on some scrap of paper somewhere in the house…. But I told him, you’re not going to be able to work on the mower. I told him, you’re not going to be doing that sort of work at least till next summer. And I didn’t say it, but probably never.”

This last took us off on whether he could live at the house alone, as he would like but which doesn’t seem possible, and what are the other options…. But we came back to the mowing, which oddly seems the most pressing of all the challenges facing Grandpa and the family, and for which, like all the others, there seems no easy solution….

The possibility of getting a neighbor kid involved was considered, but such a kid is only theoretical; a lawn service company was an option, but Grandpa wouldn’t pay what they would charge. A new mower seemed silly, I said, bringing us back to the starting point. Why not just spend that money getting the rider mower repaired.

“The thing is,” Rosemary said, “it’s not just a matter getting it fixed. He doesn’t think anyone else is capable of operating the mower.” She laughed, frustrated. “He thinks only he can do it, but even if that was true, and it’s not of course, he’s not going to be able to do anything like that this summer.”

So he doesn’t trust anyone else to do something only he, he thinks, knows how to do properly, but the task is something he no longer can do…. Stalemate.

Kristen, Rosemary’s daughter, said, “Just get it fixed and do the mowing, and don’t even tell him.” Rosemary and Mike just shook their heads and smiled humorlessly.

“First,” Rosemary said, “he has to pay for it. I can’t sign checks for him. Second, you won’t have to deal with him….”

After dinner—cheeseburger pie, a lovely casserole—I went to see Grandpa at the rehab center. Before I  left, Rosemary said, “See if you can talk him into getting the rider mower fixed. Give it a try.”

I’ve been reluctant to take on such responsibility, but I did try, sort of. I told him I had done the mowing, and he shook his head at the thought of the electric mower. I said, “maybe we could get someone out to fix that rider mower in the garage….” But he countered with the same arguments against, saying no one else knew what to do with it, that he’d take care of the job himself, and it would only take an hour or so for him to get it back together….

I didn’t argue. In the end, he’s not going to get what he wants, but I don’t want to be the one to tell him.