Whole Again
Our house sits on two lots. It was that way for years. Then we bought the three lots behind our house. I’ve always struggled with what to call that property. Technically, according to the taxing authority, it’s part of our house. But visually, it’s separated from the original two lots by a fence. It’s where we have our pool, and it’s where we kept a garden when the vegetable gardener was still alive, and we almost always have a big bloom of wildflowers.
Then today, actually this morning, as I sat down to write, I realized I could simply call the area, the back lots. It sounds like a movie set and maybe it is. I go back there to recharge my batteries, walk around, take a dip in the pool, feel like I’m in nature, get away from my troubles. It’s not as fancy as some people have, but fancy enough. It’s an area where I go to feel less trapped by life, by events, by people. I can breathe back there. And at night it’s really dark and I can see the stars.
What got me started thinking about this name issue was my trip into the back lots yesterday. My son mowed last week, and the lots look clean and fresh. But over in the northeast corner he mowed around about five Greater Mullein. I walked over to look at the Mullein with its fuzzy leaves, then I checked out a Turks cap I put in the ground several years back. And finally, I just stood there looking across the expanse of grass to the trees beyond the fence, and then the sky above, and I felt really good about myself, and maybe even whole again. And I can hardly wait for next spring and the bluebonnets, something true and constant.
John W. Wilson is the author of the Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale