Seeking Beauty

20x24 Oil

This year, rather than making New Year’s resolutions, which I have done forever, I have decided that instead I will pursue a few worthy intentions, one of which is to bring more beauty into my life. Beauty in art, beauty in music, beauty in nature and beauty in the people around me.

But beauty is a subjective thing, and can be greatly limited by the conscious and unconscious judgements we all have. And there are the innate things that cause us to see things differently, things we just have gut feelings about. My art for example. Some will love it and call it bold, fun and colorful, and others will stand back and say, “Huh. Interesting.”

There are all kinds of things that people have opinions about. Take spiders and centipedes. Centipedes are my freak-out bug, but some people love them and keep as pets in terrariums. Then again, I don’t mind spiders, but I’ve seen people take off a shoe and slap at them as they race across a wall and absolutely will not stop until the thing is dead or has somehow escaped.

And if you really want to get weird, there are those who, oddly … really oddly … like toads.

I guess I was around nine or ten years old when my mom gave me The Word. We lived on Mahealani Place in Kailua on the island of O’ahu. Mom had just lost her second husband and was left with three wild kids and one too young to be wild. My mother was frazzled. She needed to scrape some things off her plate. I was the first to go.

“Listen,” she said grabbing my shoulders and drilling me with serious mom eyes. “I have my hands full and I need you to take care of yourself from now on. Can you do that?”

“Uh ….”

“Good. From now on you’re taking over the yard.”

“What?”

“The yard, the yard. As in the grass is a mile high.”

“You want me to cut the grass?”

She rapped her knuckles on my head. “Wow, I knew something was in there.”

Already I was thinking about the lawnmower. It was the first thing you got wind of whenever you came into our garage. The whole place reeked of rotting grass and gasoline.

Mom eased back and smiled. “I think you’re old enough to handle it.”

“Yeah … sure,” I said. “But can you show me how the lawnmower works?”

“Maybe, but I really don’t have time. You’re a boy. Figure it out. Be resourceful. Anyway, it’s easy. Just wrap the rope around the thingie and pull.”

I went out to the garage and looked at the lawnmower. It was a green Toro, the rotary type that cuts the grass like a fan facing down. It had rusty spots all over it, but that was normal when you lived a block from the ocean. Salt corrodes everything.

I rolled it out into the sun and squatted down next to it.

The rope was tied to the handle and the thingie you wrapped it around was on top, just like mom said.

“What are you doing?”

I jumped and looked behind me at my six-year-old sister. “I’m getting ready to cut the grass,” I said.

Her eyes dropped to the old lawnmower. “With that?”

“Well … actually, I was thinking of using a pair of scissors.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I just rolled this out for fun.”

“Oh.”

Our yard was not that small. Actually, it was a sea of grass, an ocean. Lots and lots of thick and snarly green stuff that rolled down our sloping yard to a swampy river.

I squinted at the lawnmower. How do you work, Mr. Toro?

I’d watched my step-dad start it a couple of times, but I hadn’t really paid much attention. I remembered he’d wrapped the rope around the crank on top, fiddled with this other thing he called a choke, then stood back and gave the rope a mighty yank. When he got the thing going, he pushed the choke back in. Something like that.

Mom stuck her head out the screen door and shouted, “Wear shoes!”

“Shoes?”

She rolled her eyes and went back inside.

Shoes.

“I’ll get them,” my eager-to-help sister said, and ran back into the house. Seconds later she ran out with my rubber slippers.

It was kind of nice to have a servant.

I stood and stepped into them.

“Here goes,” I said. “This is dangerous work, so stand back.”

I wound the rope around the crank.

I fiddled with the choke, as if I knew what I was doing.

I gripped the rope and looked at my wide-eyed sister. “Ready?”

“Pull it,” she said, always the plucky one.

I pulled the rope.

Pa-chock!

That dang Toro yanked back so hard it nearly took my arm off. It sputtered, belched, hacked, spat, and went back to sleep.

“Ow!” I said rubbing my shoulder.

My sister could hardly contain herself. “Do it again!”

I bunched my lips and wound the rope around the crank. This time I put my foot on the mower and put more muscle into it.

Pa-chock!

Nothing.

I pulled again.

And again.

And again.

My sister moved closer to get a better look. “Does it work?”

I squinted at it and rewound the rope one more time. I gritted my teeth and gave it everything I had!

Bbrr – bbrrr -- bbrannnnnnnnnn!

That old Toro barked and roared like a motorcycle.

Bbrrraaannnnnnnnn!

My sister’s hands flew to her ears. Smoke came billowing out of the Toro, smelly and black. I grabbed the handle and pushed the mower toward the jungle that was our yard.

Bbrrraaann …

I wasn’t even two feet in when it gagged and died.

Dang.

The grass was too thick and too deep. I’d have to go slower, push it ahead an inch at a time to keep the Toro alive. I started it up again, and this time went into the deep dark forest much slower.

For a few minutes, it worked.

Until.…

Snick.

Something wet splattered all over my feet. I jumped back, the mower unmoving in the grass, but still roaring.

I looked down at a splatter of blood and guts all over my feet and ankles. “Ah, man!”

I killed the mower and backed away.

“Eew,” my sister said. “You killed a toad. Sick.”

I ran up to the side of the house, grabbed the garden hose and turned on the spigot. “So gross!” I said as my sister crept up to look at the guts in the grass.

I held the hose away from me, waiting for what I knew would come out with the water. And I was right. I yelped and leaped back as a fat red centipede gushed out and vanished into the grass. I hated centipedes!

“Why did you scream?” my sister said, looking up.

I ignored her and squirted the blood off my feet and rubber slippers, then headed back out to the lawnmower. I laid the handle down so I could see under it.

It was a toad, all right. Or had been.

I looked up, thinking, this whole yard is probably full of toads hiding in the grass. I should have thought of that. I knew they liked to dig down in there and sleep.

I got the rope and wound it around the crank.

And stood there. I couldn’t pull it. Shredding toads wasn’t right. And besides, I liked them. They sang me to sleep at night.

I’d have to dig them out and chase them down to the river before I could get back to work.

I thought about ordering my servant to do it, but no, that would take all day and into the night.

I started nudging them out of the grass with my big toe and got my sister to urge them down to the river with a stick.

“Why don’t you just carry them?” she said.

“They give you warts, that’s why.”

“What’s warts?”

“Those things that grow on your skin and look like pencil erasers.”

“Eew.”

After about twenty toads I gave up and went back to the mower. I was about to fire it up when my friends Terry and Roger showed up. They were cousins and both lived on my street.

“How much are you getting paid to do that?” Terry said pointing his chin toward the Toro.

“Nothing.”

“Not worth it.”

“Help me find toads,” I said. “I probably didn’t even get half of them. I shredded one and got guts on my feet.”

“Toad killer,” Terry said.

“It was an accident.”

We headed out into the thick grass.

“Here’s one,” Roger called.

“Take it to the river,” I said. “It won’t move unless you push it.”

“I’m not touching it.”

“Just make it move with your foot.”

We were all barefoot. Nobody wore shoes in Hawaii. No kids, at least.

“Nope,” Roger said.

“Fine.”

I tried to dig it out with my toe, but it wouldn’t budge. What the heck. I reached down and pulled it out with my hands. It was cold and waxy. I held it up and looked into its eyes. “Say hey, Mr. Boof,” I said.

It gulped at me.

I carried it down to the water and watched it swim away.

“Now you’re getting warts!” Terry said, laughing.

I checked my hands. Maybe I should dip them in gasoline, or something. My feet and rubber slippers, too.

Terry and Roger sprinted for the street when I came at them with outstretched hands. At Melissa’s house I stopped and turned back. Ho man, was that fun!

So anyway, I managed to get the grass cut. The yard looked kind of mangled when I was done. But I did it. And actually, I liked doing it, and thought I might do it again, sometime, maybe even once a month.

“Can I get an allowance now?” I asked my mom when she came out to inspect my work.

“Uh … interesting job, but no.”

“Why?”

“You shouldn’t get paid for helping the family.”

“But —”

“You want to get paid, go do the neighbors yards.”

Hey, I thought. Good idea!

I started with the lady next door. She was old and cranky and already had a wart. I knocked on her door.

“What.”

“I’ll cut your grass for money,” I said. “I’m good at it.”

“How much?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “Um … a dollar?”

“I already have a lawn service.”

She slapped the screen door shut.

“Fifty cents?”

Later that day I got my baseball mitt and took it down by the river and dug out a sleeping bufo. That’s what we called the big toads. Bufos. This one fit perfectly into my mitt. “You know, Mr. Boof?” I said. “You’re a beautiful creature. You can live in my lawn as long as you want. And I promise I’ll always wake you up whenever I cut the grass.”

I swear I heard a grateful burp.

I folded Mr. Boof into my mitt like a taco and carried him under my arm down the street to Terry’s house.

His mom gasped when she came to the door and saw what I’d brought with me.

“Is Terry home?” I asked.

“Don’t come in the house! You stay right there! Terry!”

He came out, and when he saw the bufo he grinned. “I guess you didn’t kill them all, huh?”

“Want to toss a baseball around?

“Not really.”

I shrugged. “Let’s do something.”

“What?”

We thought a minute, then he put his arm around my shoulder and leaned close. “Why don’t we go show that thing to Melissa’s cat?”

Like my bufo, life is truly a beautiful, beautiful thing.

One thing I learned from bufos in the grass is that whenever someone gives me The Word, I can deal with it, I can figure it out. I’m not helpless. But more than the obvious lessons you get from solving problems, sometimes there are other consequences that you don’t think about. Like when in the seventh grade my prep school made me wear shoes. I struggled through weeks of painful heel blisters, but I also stopped getting ringworm on my ankles. That was unexpected, and great. And then when I was twenty-one I learned how to meditate, and that helped me deal with issues of anxiety. But again, unexpectedly, meditation has kept me calm all my life.

Silver linings.

That’s what’s so exciting about life. There’s always some new mystery to explore, some new lesson to be learned, some new truth to be discovered.

That’s why I like toads. They’re beautiful in their warty way. You just have to stop thinking of them as being creepy. As a kid I didn’t always treat them well, but sometimes I did. And when I did I felt good inside.

So, as I think about it, my intention to bring more beauty into my life really has more to do with not judging than anything else, to be more accepting, to just let be what wants to be. Like nudging toads out of the grass and herding them down to the river with compassion. After all, in the Grand Plan, toads are as beautiful in their own way as I am in mine.

Seek beauty. Love beauty. Be beauty.

That’s my intention.