Why I Don't Make My Teenagers Mow the Lawn

I have a large lawn and two teenage children, but I'm still the designated Mower of Lawns. A number of people have asked (and many more, I'm sure, have wondered silently) why I don't make my kids mow the lawn. And I have an answer for that: Because I need to do it. 

I need to do it for a lot of different reasons. One big one is that I need the exercise. I'm not an exercize-y person, I'm a couch potato. I have a long list of medical issues that make exercise programs like Pilates or yoga or spin classes or dancing or even bowling prohibitive. I'm a lousy swimmer. I don't jog. When I try to walk I want to stop every 2 minutes to look at a flower or a bird or to pat someone's dog. Mowing the lawn is an intense but manageable form of exercise that uses my legs and my shoulders and gets my heart rate up. As long as I use my inhaler and wear my gloves, I come out of it in good - and possibly better - health. 

In addition to being doable, it has a forced deadline. I can see when the grass is getting long and I know that the longer I put off mowing the harder it will be. So I have to do it. There's no "I'll just skip this week" with a lawn. It will not stop growing and wait until you're ready. And the whole neighborhood will know that you skipped a week. Implicit peer pressure is a powerful motivator. 

It needs to be done early in the day. Except for during the very early spring and the late fall, it's too hot most of the day to be outside doing physical labor for a couple of hours if you don't have to. So it gets me going in the morning, which makes it easier to keep going throughout the day. 

One of the most important things about it for me is that it's a task with a measurable end point. There are so many items on my to-do list that have multiple steps or can only be done a little at a time that I can work on one for hours and my list still isn't any shorter because I can't cross anything off yet. But when I mow the lawn, it's done. Check! One less item on the list. 

I can look at it and see that it looks better than before. Other chores, like laundry and dishes, are just moving piles from one place to another. Vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen, when done regularly, don't make a hugely visible difference - it's cleaner, but it isn't all that visibly cleaner. A freshly mowed lawn is clearly a freshly mowed lawn. There's a sense of satisfaction in that. 

But perhaps the most important thing of all is that it gives me a sense of control. I still feel like life is spinning around me faster than I can handle it. There's still a long list of "dad stuff" that I'm trying to figure out and master. But I can mow the lawn. When I'm dealing with something that makes me think, "I can't do this," I can mow the lawn. I can't figure out how to make the fireplace light, but I can mow the lawn. I can't find someone to open the pool, but I can mow the lawn. I can't set up a new laptop by myself, but I can mow the lawn. 

It's a start.