The Lawn Fairies

The Lawn Fairies                                                          01/21/09 AML

I grew up in a Neighborhood where every home had a huge grassy front yard. There was an un spoken underlying contest amongst the men on the block, who could keep the best well maintained lawn through out every spring and summer year. Of course my dad won all the time. We were located on a corner lot and had an extra spread of lawn on the side street. He would mow it with a hand mower; remember this was in the 60’s, there were no gas powered lawn mowers, except maybe for the very rich. He was madly meticulous about that lawn, as you could always find him out there constantly watering and fertilize it. The lawn was always the most luscious green, smooth grass anyone ever saw. Dandelions never had a chance, in fact every time he would see a yellow dandelion pop its head up he would run out and pull it out of the ground….and god forbid if a dog would come by to leave a little memento….

One late night when I was about six or seven I could not sleep so I went out to the living room to sit on the front couch to look out the big picture window that faced the lawn and street. I remember it being a misty dewy spring evening around eleven pm. As I was looking down upon the lawn I began to see big circles drawn in the grass. I would say kind of like crop circles in big fields today but smaller. It was like someone took a big ball point pen and drew them into the ground. Yet, when I went out in the morning to find them they were gone. At night when every one was a sleep I would creep out and look at these finely crafted circles in the grass. I kept thinking maybe it was something my dad was doing but when I watched him manicure his lawn every week he would only mow in vertical and horizontal lines, not in circles.

 So finally I asked my mom one night about them and showed her what I was talking about. Her explanation was quite wild but I believed every word of it. She explained to me with her amazing dimpled smile and Irish green twinkling eyes, that every night the Lawn Fairies would come out across the land and draw circles in every ones lawns. She told me it was what they did for fun. Occasionally, we would sit up together waiting for the fairies to do their magic but they never did materialize. Yet all of a sudden as we looked the circles would pop out of the lawn! She went on to tell me that they were very mischievous creatures and would never show themselves if they knew they were being watched. Well I guess they always knew that we were watching out for them for they never did show up. My mom was Irish and I guess it was a story that was passed down through the generations. I am 47 years old and my mom has sense left this earth. But I have a suspicion she is playing with the fairies up in heaven and making her own lawn circles. Every time I look out upon the lawn and see the circles I think of my mom and I still believe her….