Introducing Oscar

Photo by S. Tsuchiya on Unsplash

I thought it was time to introduce you all to Oscar. We’ve been together now for quite some time and he takes up a large amount of time these days and it seemed only fitting to introduce you all to him.

I first laid eyes on Oscar on Mother’s Day this year. It was not love at first sight.

My second oldest son and his fiance’ had shown up at my house early on Mother’s Day. She delivered an iced coffee to me and my son pulled and he pulled his push mower from the back of his truck. His push mower was thirsty for oil and smoked angrily to get more of it. It’s a great mower for their little lawn, not so much for my giant front lawn. Yet, just the same, he went to work mowing the angled lines in my yard that he knew I admired.

He is the one who taught me how to make lawn lines, after all.

Meanwhile, his fiance’ and I sat curled up on the couch in the house sipping iced coffee and looking on facebook marketplace for a lawn mower for me. My son was dripping sweat and breathing in oily smoke. It was not the same morning experience for all of us.

They left when the front lawn was done and took off to get ready for church and I sat on my porch sipping coffee and admiring the lawn. Yes, I cried for the appreciation of it.

I used to mow the lawn all the time in my old life. But since I left that life, I have not mowed my lawn and I missed it. I appreciated how my dad and my son had been mowing my lawn prior, but this year had proved to be too busy and no one was coming by. I was tired of feeling like an inconvenience and wanted to mow my own lawn.

I had just come to the conclusion earlier in the week that I actually didn’t have to ask anyone for permission, I could just go get my own mower. And my son’s finace’ and I were quite sure we had found the one for me. The video showed a mower slicing through shin high grass. I was infatuated with it. We made the arrangements with the seller to pick it up and I ran the plan by my third son when he stopped by later that afternoon.

“Ma! Why on earth would you buy a mower?” he asked me incredulously, slapping his hand on his forehead. “Hold on. Don’t buy one.”

He left in a huff.

He arrived awhile later with a trailer carrying a running lawn mower.

You read that correctly. A running mower.

As in, it was on the trailer with the engine on.

“Here is your mower!” And he began to explain to me that the battery was a little low but no problem, he had jumped it and just kept it running to make sure it charged well. “It might not hurt to go out every day or every other day and start the mower just to keep the charge,” he suggested to me.

When I told my son’s finace’ to cancel the facebook meet up of the mower I was infatuated with and had to pass over, I confessed I felt like I had just been given a mower that was meant for the scrap pile but they thought it might eek out a little bit more life that would be good enough for me.

Good enough.

I am tired of “good enough”. There, I admitted it right there for you all to read and quote me on. I am very tired of “good enough”.

My third son became the head mechanic for the mower. It was a process to find a belt when we realized it was about done for. He had to sharpen the blades because they were more than slightly beat up and why on earth would I replace them when he could just sharpen them up. I didn’t have gas cans and he came home with about four of them for me to make sure I had enough. After days up on days of work, the mower was deemed worthy of me using it, but I must promise to wear closed toe shoes (he glared at me about this and emphasized again they must be closed toe shoes) and I must go very very very slow. Second gear the whole time. The grass was too long to go any faster than that.

And there I was with a barely held together mower. But it was mine. Good enough was going to have to be, well, good enough.

He got the mower started for me, deemed it fine, warned me of all the warnings one more time, and left me to it.

I was gleeful to mow my lawn. And even after HOURS of mowing (second gear low is sloooooooow), I was ready to burst into tears. I was mowing my own lawn on my own mower.

Good enough, I guess, was actually good enough.

The next time I went to mow the lawn; I sent a cheery text to our family group chat on snapchat. “Off to mow!”

And then came the spiral of snapchats.

“How do you jump a battery?”

“How do you fill a tire with air?”

“How do you get the choke to work?”

“Are the cables on here right because I can’t seem to get this battery charged.”

Then, all the sudden, they would get a video of me all grins, “GOT IT!”

The kids came to hold their breath and wait for whatever catastrophic event happened every single time I mowed my lawn. The snapchats were never ending, but soon they became shorter because I began figuring it out more and more.

I had never ever jumped anything on my own. And now, every single time - yes, every single time - I want to mow my lawn I have to jump the battery. And while the battery is being charged, I fill the tires that are flat every single time with my cigarette lighter charged air pump. About the time the tires are pumped, I use (now, before it was always WD-40) a silicone spray to loosen the choke and then I press down the pedal, pull the choke line, say a little prayer, and turn over the key. Then while the smoke billows from all the sputtering the mower does to come to life, I take off the jumper cables, put them and the air pump back in my car, shut the hood of my car and then drive my car far away from the mower so she doesn’t get sprayed with grass. About this time, the smoke has cleared enough for me to mow the lawn.

Every. Single. Time.

I decided to name the mower. I thought if he had a name, he would feel more important and then run better for me. I thought of Oscar the Grouch and we all should not like a monster that is grouchy and lives in a garbage can, but here we all are loving Oscar the Grouch all these years. Also, my mower is green. To make the mower feel very important, he was deemed “Mr. Oscar Rusty”. Because, well, he is rusty.

I have to admit, I was feeling pretty accomplished. I was getting to where I could trouble shoot some problems and was even considering if I should look into learning more about small engine repair. I may know someone who can teach me something about that.

But what surprised me the most were all the people who began asking me about my mower and how it was doing and if it was still working. “You have to jump it every single time?” they would ask incredulously. And I would shrug like “Yah, it’s not a big deal,” even while I stood a little straighter because it was one more thing that I had learned. And not just learned, I could teach it if I needed to.

But all that changed one Sunday afternoon. I was mowing along when I heard a sound and knew immediately what had happened. The belt had fallen off.

No worries! I could do this! The belt was not broken but just had fallen off. I did see the belt was worn but I was pretty sure I could get it on and at least finish the lawn for the day.

I watched some youtube videos. I pulled and yanked and tried and snapchatted the family group and messaged some friends and tried their suggestions.

I have the best friends. No one tells you that divorced woman friends are the best. They jump in immediately to help solve any problem big or small head on with no fear. “I’m loading up my kids and coming over right now,” my fiery friend declared to me, “we’ll get that fixed together.”

Instead, I told them what I knew was true even if he hadn’t said it, one of my son’s would eventually come to my rescue.

And then I went into the house, laid on my couch and cried my eyes out.

When I admitted this a few days later to my youngest son, he gave me a look of concern. “Sheesh, ma, over dramatic much?”

But it was like that mower named Oscar was a symbol of my life. I had been “figuring it out” and “learning new things” and “making do” and trying just so hard in so many things and I was just so tired. Not getting that belt back on the mower felt like a slap in my face to remind me that I wasn’t doing as well as I thought I was.

I wasn’t good enough, smart enough to figure out a simple lawn mower belt.

And if I couldn’t figure that out, how could I figure anything else out in life?

Okay, maybe I was being over dramatic but those are the thoughts I was wrestling with and I cried with a surprising force over it all.

And then I took a nap.

When I woke up, I ate some actual food.

And I felt some better.

I looked at Mr. Oscar Rusty in the yard and said to God, “Why on earth did you give me such a ‘gift’? Why does everything have to be so hard?”

And I heard, “What father gives his son a scorpion?”

Yup, that’s what I heard. And I remembered the Bible passage….

Luke 11:9-11

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.”

I looked at Oscar and thought of all the gifts it had actually given me. All the things I had trouble shot and learned. All the stories I had shared with friends about my mowing adventures. The gift of having annoying lawn mower snaps to send my kids. The confidence this mower had given me.

I ended up getting the mower back to the yard and I had the brilliant idea of using to paint roller handles to pull the belt to try to get it back on it’s track. AND IT WORKED! I was so giddy I couldn’t even do anything but look dumbfounded at it and then I immediately had to share the good news with those who had helped me. I did nearly one whole pass on the lawn and the belt fell off again, disintegrated.

I felt deflated but not defeated. I had figured that belt out. And I knew my son was coming to fix it. But for one single pass on my lawn, I had fixed the belt. I walked away from Oscar the mower, leaving the belt…and the paint roller sticks…on the mower for my son.

So, imagine my surprise when I came home the next day to see my jungle of my lawn mowed and my mower still sitting there unusable.

Someone had come in and mowed my entire now jungle of a lawn. I was giddy. Ecstatic. My lawn looked gorgeous.

Someone had been a miracle to me - mowing my lawn for me.

My mower had been a gift to me - it ended up truly being enough of the good I needed

I had asked and friends had shown up - another example of being authentic and receiving

Admittedly I am now asking God to give Oscar a friend, perhaps a brand new shiny green lawn tractor with press start and sharp straight blades. I mean, if God gave me this imagination, why not use it to my advantage to ask for what I want?

In the meantime, I have a son who got me up and running again. This weekend, I am back to mowing on Mr. Oscar Rusty. What new adventures and challenges might I get myself into?

In it all, I know that I can trust God to give me what is good enough for me to receive a treasure…like Oscar has been.

And now you have been introduced to Oscar. I am sure you will be hearing a lot more from him.