When my wife and I first moved into our house back in 1999, one of the things I wanted to do was cut the lawn. This was the height of irony since my father and I carried on a years-long war of attrition revolving around my myriad of strategies to avoid that exact activity. Once my dad quipped to my mom: “if that kid put the effort into just doing what I ask him to do that he puts into trying to get out of it, we’d be on the cover of Home and Garden.” Ah, childhood memories.
Anyway, the movers hadn’t been gone long when I hustled out to procure a 6.5 HP Briggs and Stratton workhorse, ideal for manicuring my estate. Mind you, simply cutting the grass was not enough in those heady days of home ownership. We were fortunate to buy a house on a hill, and I wanted that sloping front lawn to have symmetry. Instead of taking the easy route and cutting across the incline, I would trudge straight up and then sidle straight down, taking care not to slip and chop my size 15s down to size. There was nothing like the satisfaction of gazing at those perfect lines of pristine greenness, the honest sweat sopping my torso. I remember distinctly during one of those moments wondering how a man could forsake such pleasure for a lawn service! My dad, as usual, had been right all along as he ordered me to do his bidding. This would never get old…. Hah!!
About a decade and 40 pounds later, not to mention a back with nothing but harsh and painful indignity to offer, I looked enviously toward my neighbor Tom’s place as an impressively efficient team of landscape specialists descended on his property. It was going to be another July 100-degree steam bath in the Nation’s Capital and my 1/4-odd acreage approached overgrown calamity. Still, the idea of attempting to tackle the beast only reinforced a desire to nap before dinner. As Tom walked to retrieve his mail, it was as if an angel of mercy was guiding me:
“Those guys look like they do a great job,” I offered.
“Yea, I love Nestor. He’s the best…. and the price is right.”
No turning back now… “Do you think he’d like some more business?” I asked with a hint of desperate hopefulness.
“I’m sure he would. Go ask him.”
And so it came to pass that the lawn mower I had grown to despise slinked into the ash bin of history, a dusty relic in the corner of my garage’s clutter. From that hellishly oppressive summer evening, when he gave my overgrown mess the Tom treatment, Nestor has never failed to show up and perform his magic, leaving it to my guilt, rather than his request, to increase the amount on the checks I hand over.
Two weeks ago, just as I was thinking I better give him a call, Nestor and crew breezed in and had me looking like Augusta before my second cup of coffee was done. I walked out to give him his check, a cost-of-living increase included, and he approached to within about ten feet and gave me his usual broad smile, although his eyes seemed a bit sad. We said our hellos and I joked how much it irked me he never seemed to lose any hair or gain any weight. He laughed and asked if “we should do the usual schedule?” It seemed odd because he had never brought that up before; I quickly surmised other customers must be cutting things back on him. His eyes now appeared to me hopeful. I said sure, same schedule, and laid the check on the hood of our Subaru.
The designation of “hero” has been stretched way past the tipping point necessary to threaten its entire relevance for a long time now. After 9/11, as America prepped for ceaseless occupation, heroes began to pop up everywhere. Of course, those at ground zero digging feverishly – with many getting chronically ill in the process – deserved exactly that level of respect and adulation. Moreover, it was an appropriate time to appreciate the sacrifices of all in uniform, who could at anytime pay the big tab just as so many NYC fire fighters did after the Twin Towers exploded.
However, in the months and years that followed, as Madison Avenue seized heroism as a fixture for ad campaigns, and jets flew over countless football pregame ceremonies punctuated with gigantic American flags, the precise characteristics that define the term became way too ambiguous, applied with carelessness and, much worse, ulterior motivation. Those who, say ten years ago, worried about stolen valor fanatics crucifying an intellectually disabled man for pretending to be a veteran, or real shysters cashing in with cons centered on some affiliation with a uniform, realized all of their worst fears this February when Trump had his wife clasp the Medal of Freedom around Rush Limbaugh’s scruff. Nothing, anywhere or anytime, could be a more powerful exhibit A for the highjacking of selfless devotion and its place within our national discussion. Perhaps the most significant nadir of a disgraceful reign filled with shameful quantities of them.
Now we endure a crisis that renders 9/11’s death toll modest by comparison, and have been afforded a fresh opportunity to revisit the subject of recognizing who are rising to the top based on splendid behavior during trial and tribulation. After that State of the Union disgrace, such a forum is overdue, a scarce silver lining in Covid-19’s otherwise bleak horizon. Rather than pointless ceremony, or referendums on what is and isn’t patriotism, this crisis effortlessly distinguishes the chaff from the grain.
Surprise! Turns out they’re everywhere, friends and neighbors simply doing their jobs, many for far less than they deserve. When I went to pick up a prescription my eyes misted as I expressed my appreciation to our pharmacist, Amy. She is a lovely woman, and has always been the consummate professional, but now, during this crisis, speaking louder than her usual soft cadence in order to be heard through her mask, she sure seems heroic to me
Ditto John Carter, a 71 year old retired Milwaukee bus driver, who waited three hours to vote last Tuesday to give the boot to right wing Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. Forced to risk his life by Kelly’s fellow travelers on the US Supreme Court, whose best justification for refusing to extend by a measly week the deadline for absentee ballots during a global pandemic, was their reticence to tinker with well worn “voting procedures and practices,” Carter said he was shocked when he first saw the line, but resolved “I have to vote…I must stay here.” Carter said he wanted to send a message to Republicans they can’t bully him. Kelly was defeated handily by liberal Democrat Jill Karofsky. Message sent.
Our universe operates on the basis of opposite forces – energy and inertia, high and low pressure, mountains and seas – so it makes sense that carnage created by the most shameless and vile among us, should be met by the most selfless and honorable. The day that stops happening is when we are done. Nestor, Amy and John are who hope looks like, even as we get daily “briefings” from one who oozes wretched disgrace.
Trump’s preposterous relevance has always owed to the awful fact he has no floor for abasement, no bottom when his conscience screams enough. Pushing forward to do his worst just comes natural. And so we see his opposite numbers doing the same in addressing the consequences he loses no sleep producing. America is great because of them; his worst won’t change that. Thankfully, it will only help us better appreciate how important they have always been to what we now may very well lose. Stand by their side! BC
Well said BC. As always.
Sidenote: Couldn’t help but recall my Dad running our lawnmower over his right foot and losing the top half of his big toe doing the same maneuver you just described, some 40 or so years ago.
Ouch, Big Man! That must have sucked. I had several close calls. The very best to you all. Please be healthy and safe!! BC