"Four Hours" was a term my brother and I came to despise in our youth. We still cringe at it with an eye roll and smirk of clever recognition. Four hours was the duration of time we were both expected to do yard work every weekend as part of our chore chart. The chore chart that adorned the refrigerator door. A manifestation of my father's military and engineering background, the chore chart was the daily worksheet upon which we would both refer and check off household tasks and duties each day, with the goal of approaching him each Friday evening in exchange for the meager weekly allowance that doing them earned us.
The timing was everything when it came to this exchange of paper for paper, the completed chart held in an outstretched hand, our heads tilted downward in a subservient Oliver Twist fashion. Approaching him right after his return from work was met with no recognition or an immediate hand-waving dismissal of our presence, signaling the need to abort the attempt and quickly obscure the paper from view because his critique of our work would be brutal and literally unrewarding at that point. Too late in the evening, typically marked by the sound of the second pour of Jim Beam over the partial remains of recently melted ice from the consumption of the first pour, would likely be met with an overly inquisitive and skeptical declaration of "let's see what we have here," snapping the paper from a trembling hand, adorning a monocle over a squinted eye, and muttering discounting references to the trash having been taken out, scoffing at the idea that the toilet bowl had been cleaned during the week, let alone flushed, and potentially tossing the crumbled the paper at our feel while grumbling "no allowance for you".
We soon found the sweet spot following dinner, at the midpoint of the first few sips of whiskey after his settling into the sofa corner, legs comfortably outstretched. Ideally, we would approach while he was in conversation with our mom about one thing or another, providing a brief division of attention that lent itself to less interest in the fine art of debate or the challenge of impromptu work inspections. It would be immediately apparent in his eyes if he were going to audit the checked squares on the worksheet grid or simply respond with "Get me my wallet." When our confidence was high enough, his wallet would already be in our other hand.
It is a bittersweet memory now, as an adult and a parent myself, to recognize a point in hindsight at which the intentions and lessons of responsibility and accountability gave way to the realities of an unhappy home, a horribly dysfunctional marriage, and the realization on his part of the trade-offs between holding us accountable and cutting us enough slack to enable us to have funds to utilize during our time outside of the densely shadowed tensions within the home.
The "four hours" of weekly yard work always loomed heaviest on us. It was the "big rock" on the list of duties to be performed. No matter how the sheet might be magnetically affixed to the refrigerator door, it would gradually shift to a point where the "yardwork" checkbox naturally fell to the bottom due to its emotional weight. Mind you, we did not live on a farm and had no cows to milk or pigs to slop. Nothing about this home had enough needs for four hours of weekly maintenance by one person, let alone two. There were front and back yards to mow, each large enough that stopping to empty the full grass catcher was necessary, but only once or twice. There were leaves and pine needles to rake, plants to water, and walkways to sweep. For a while, dog poop was also a factor as both a task and an occasionally overlooked landmine. Yet none of this work, done back to back, would amount to four hours of total time. Ever.
It was in the weeds that time would be lost.
Pulling weeds was not only tediously time-consuming, but it was made all the more difficult with the detailed directions about how it was done properly or not. Our mother gave us direction by demonstration, kneeling on the ground, grasping at the base point of a week sprouting through the soil, and pulling slowly and firmly in order to extract the entire root, which was the mandated method. We were advised, rightly so, that just snapping the top left the root in the ground, and they would be there again next week, effectively proving to be an endless cycle of repetitive wasted time. Not snapping them off proved to be far more challenging than I'd expected.
At roughly 14-15 years old, four hours of what we considered "hard labor" was unreasonable, unfair, and unnecessary, yet unfortunately unavoidable. Back then, child labor decisions were made in the maternity ward, not in the courts. There was no negotiation between a parent and child about their expectation of them helping out around the house. Yet we did manage to find wiggle room in our varied approaches to weaseling out.
My brother was a trailblazing genius at narrowly escaping his term with deft timing, slick insight, and advanced planning. When he heard either parent stirring in the morning, even the slightest creak or groan of their floorboards or bodies, he would quietly maneuver to the backyard through the garage, picking up a rake and trash can along the way, to have himself visible through the windows when they made their way to the kitchen. His unkempt bedhead and shambled attire conveyed an added air of fatigue. "I started at 6," he'd gasp as if having been working for hours instead of being half awake and having rushed into position. That was his Saturday morning catchphrase: "I started at 6." I would not be surprised if it still echoes its way around his subconscious thoughts or an actual waking utterance between the hours of 8-10 am on any given weekend.
We'd occasionally cross paths, he on his way in and I on my way out. A wry smile and slight gleam in his eyes would take the place of the more obvious high-five of respectful recognition of how well he'd played his hand. I would subsequently put in about an hour or so of effort before lamenting to our parent that he'd taken care of most of it before I got up, affording me an equal opportunity of avoidance. My father never pressed this stuff and clearly thought it was absurd, while my mom would occasionally throw out some random task like sweeping behind the herb pots or hosing down the cobwebs on the macrame plant hangers before I could call it quits.
All of these recollections return to my conscious thoughts any time I find myself pulling weeds, as I did today. I borrowed a friend's weed sprayer, which he had filled with a DIY natural mixture of water, salt, and vinegar that screamed "H. Salt Esquire" on the entire drive home. I tried it out; it worked quite well and I have plans to use it further tomorrow. Still, some of the weeds needs I have required a more hands-on approach. And it's still a challenge to get the whole root, too.
So that's how I spent an hour or so of my early afternoon today pulling weeds. 40+ years ago, I'd have my portable battery-powered AM radio tuned to KFRC in order to catch Casey Kasem's weekly top 40 updates or to hear "Radar Love," "Hooked On A Feeling," or "Seasons in the Sun" while filling a bucket with freshly pulled weeds, roots included. Today, I wore a single AirPod and devoted the time to completing Ann Patchett's poetically inspirational "Every Precious Day." It left me feeling an earnest and melancholy appreciation of her familiar reflections on life experiences as they play out in real-time and are later recalled with the awareness of their passage through the eyes and heart of gratitude to have lived them, lived through them, and experienced living because of them.
Maybe tomorrow, when I return to complete what I started, I'll pull up the AT40 stream on iHeart radio.