I had to wave and smile as I saw a fellow commuter the other morning.
It was a dreary, gray, cold day – a braw and bitter marnin’, as the Scots would say, about as February as it could get. I was snug and warm in a climate-controlled car, with a good jacket and plenty of coffee inside me. The wind was sharp and frigid, a frozen axe coming down from somewhere up north where folks apparently don’t like folks down south.
The stalwart fellow commuter was driving down the side of the road on a riding mower.
The deck was up, so I knew he wasn’t cutting the grass along the state right of way. He had on an orange hoodie (which was what first caught my eye) and a ball cap. There was a cup of what I hoped was coffee in his hand, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and he was smiling. The wind was at his back as he kept chugging along.
He slowed down as he came to the intersection, but he had the right of way so I motioned him on through, earning a salute from the steaming cup in his hand. I thought at first he was heading to a business across the way, but he kept on puttering along. I saw him in the rear view, still getting it down the road, at all of five or maybe ten miles per hour. I had nothing but respect for his determination to get wherever he was going, since just hobbling to the car in that wind was unpleasant enough for me that morning.
For some reason, the fellow made me smile.
At the first stoplight was a young man in a nice truck, hunched over, shoulders taut, staring hard straight through the front glass, impatiently waiting. As is my habit, I tried to catch his eye and nod a good morning, but he wasn’t interested. Whatever he was heading to, wherever he was going, his expression didn’t indicate happiness or tolerance of friendliness from strangers on this cold Monday morning. Not did his barking tires indicate contentment when the light turned green and freed him from the inconvenience of traffic safety laws.
I compared the Lawnmower Man and the Angry Driver as I headed toward my office. I don’t know either of them from Adam’s housecat and might not even see either one again, but they each helped me get a better handle on the day.
The Lawnmower Man made me smile. He reminded me of my friend John “Woody” Wood, who walks around his adopted hometown waving at every passing stranger, greeting folks on the street and sharing a smile with them, and generally trying to spread good cheer. He’s one of the most genuinely nice people I know, generous to a fault, and always willing to try to make someone’s day better. Woody gave me three matted pieces of his own art to hang in my office, and they greet everyone who comes through the door (and a lot of folks smile at them, too.)
I had other reasons to smile later, such as when my youngest granddaughter laughed at me, displaying her latest teeth. She’s a little over-achiever since she already has a mouthful and is still a couple months away from her first birthday. She says something that sounds like “Grampa” when heard through the filter of a chosen grampa’s ears, a grampa whose hearing has always been suspect.
The first of my jonquils and daffodils greeted me as I pulled out the gate that morning, and one of the squirrels at the feeder with Carl looked suspiciously fat from something other than the tributes we leave for them. I strongly suspected that in the near future, the hollow gum a few yards into the woods would have a new deposit of leaves and straw, and Carl would be pacing tree the limbs outside, ready to hand out the squirrel equivalent of cigars to celebrate his mate’s newborns.
It was my sister’s birthday, and I was looking forward to calling her in the evening; I’d spent more than an hour the night before on the phone with an old friend, now bedridden in a nursing home with a broken-down body but a mind and wit sharper than the morning’s wind. He’d given me a story idea to track down, as well as helping me keep other things in perspective.
True, I spend much of every day in pain – but I can still walk, albeit with a stick gleaned from the woods around our little place in the deep woods, which also makes me smile.
I honestly try to keep a positive outlook most of the time, but sometimes it’s much easier to adopt the attitude of the young man in the truck, starting straight ahead, noticing nothing, angry at everything. I know the feeling, and have been there enough that I will not criticize someone else for having a bad day.
And it is rare that I am so cheerful that I would be smiling while riding a lawnmower down the side of the highway on a freezing cold day, despite whatever errand was so important that it couldn’t wait til I could find a ride or delay until better weather. The Lawnmower Man was making the best of a bad situation, a habit to which we should all aspire.
All too often, it seems every day is a Monday, regardless of the calendar; there are bills to pay, multiple people who want to do our country harm, many more who hurt others for no reason except for their own greed and their evil hearts. There are politicians pointing fingers and more problems than solutions. Few people truly want to help yet so many want to complain, cry and criticize anyone who does reach out to someone else, or even hinder those who truly try to help. There are folks who just seem to enjoy misery, and enjoy it more when they can spread it. There are so many who are in such a hurry that they never have time for the daffodils, the laughing babies or the long phone calls.
Then there are people like the Lawnmower Man, offering up a coffee salute as he makes his way on down the road in a freezing wind at three miles per hour.
The world needs more Lawnmower Men.
