Ben

It's Christmas tree fetching time, which makes me think of Ben in all his glory and our different approaches to tasks, like bringing a tree home -- to use rope or the human hand?  Ben.  Ben is man who gets things done, most anything, really.  It may not be tidy, it may not be thorough, but he will make it happen.  I actually can't think of a time in the last 20 years when he's said a job was impossible, except perhaps this summer when he bowed out of re-piping all of the plumbing between the basement and upstairs (thankfully).

In these early days of babyhood, I've watched a lot of yard happenings through the windows.  This is the first time we've had any sort of yard to care for, and as most things new, I've gotten to learn more about Ben's ways -- you have a baby, you meet your spouse as a parent.  You have a yard, you meet your spouse as a yardman (I'm afraid he has yet to discover this part of me, however).  I grew up in a townhouse without a blade of grass, so it's possible I just never knew the versatility of a lawnmower; I thought it was literally for cutting flat planes of grass...

One day, after watching Ben madly chainsaw down a row of azaleas that must be decades old (huge, and yes, smack in the middle of the yard), I saw him push and shove the lawnmower up a bank of thick weedy ivy, losing his footing as he pushed, his body nearly parallel to the ground.  At the top, he jammed the mower over the tree-like azalea stumps again and again, shards of wood wildly flying, until the stumps were sufficiently blunted.  (He was smoothing the hill for sledding, naturally).

And just now, I saw Ben push the mower out of the garage and mow the concrete, with, I believe, the purpose of blowing away the dirt.  He mowed it steadily in neat rows, engulfed by a whirlwind of dirt until the slab looked clean.  Then he moved on to the grass.

This year, Ben and I did not tussle about the tree.  Eden and I unceremoniously picked one up while running errands and a strange man tied it to the car -- he also happened to tie our car doors closed in the process so that I had to feed Eden into her car seat through the back window and gracefully hoist myself in through another.  And all were glad to have a tree in the house.  Ben didn't even insist on pulling out the chainsaw to recut the end or trim the trees in the yard while he was at it.  He does, I am sure, have great bonfire plans for the end of this season, but more about that to come.