I enjoy the idea of being outside, of being “in nature.” Of getting the fresh air and the vitamin D my doctor insists I’m lacking, trapped in a classroom composed of cinder blocks and poor ventilation for 8 to 12 hours every day. I love the idea, but not the application. It’s all more mirage than meaningful. The temperature, heat index, humidity, and dew point are never perfect. And I’m an easy sweater whose had hypothermia on several occasions. Besides, I hate the majority of things that live outside. Flies, mosquitoes, gnats, and other emissaries of assholery, incorporeally whispering their doppler effect of angst in my ear, as if I don’t have my own shit going on. I’m constantly paranoid of the beetles, tiny red ants, deer ticks, spiders, and the things I think are spiders—but will be well, actually-ed by someone who knows better—hacking through the undergrowth of hair on my legs and arms. Sure, birds are nice, but I can’t tell a sparrow from a chickadee. Can only identify cardinals, blue jays, and yellow finches by their colors. Squirrels are the delights of my life, but the ones in my neighborhood only offer wary greetings when I’m behind glass and screen. They’re not as friendly and fearless as the one’s mobbing Boston Common—one of the sole places I’d even consider just sitting in nature, nostalgia and nearby stores winning out.
What the hell is so great about the outdoors? For a decade, I’ve taught The Bluest Eye to high school seniors and Toni makes it clear that the outdoors is the life-terror that leads good Black folks to spend all our energy—all our love—protecting our hard-won shelter and keeping our dark asses inside. Besides, we’ve watched the horror movies they write. Know Ice Cube said he would only star in Anaconda if he was allowed to survive. Most of my friends are outdoorsy folk—campers, hikers, foragers. White. Always searching for some new site or adventure or hidden gem. They try to convince and convert me, sometimes attempting to use shame. Ask me what’s beneath it all. I lovingly tell them to go fuck themselves.
Occasionally, I ignore the inevitable scratching and arm-swinging—the swatting about my ears and shoulders as if warding off demons, that results in me seeming unhinged to my neighbors and sends me streaking inside—because I have an expensive, teak patio set that should be used because it was expensive and I am Jamaican and Irish and cheap. The set was bought because the ex-wife moved here from scrambling about the woods and shores of the Pacific Northwest and wanted somewhere to enjoy nature in the backyard of our new home. Sitting in any of the four remaining chairs is a perilous endeavor. I stopped caring for them—the yearly sanding, oiling, staining, and storing for winter—so they are in pretty terrible shape, though better than the two which completely decoupled. Someone has noted I said “ex-wife” above and is drawing some sort of a parallel. Fuck them too.
When I force myself to sit in any of the four remaining chairs—weather-beaten, falling apart—, I’m confronted by the majestic, lilliputian forest of weeds in well-regulated lines at my feet, mostly gathered in the shade beneath the collapsing table, around the black base of the umbrella stand. A brick-work grid of mossy undergrowth populated by hell if I know: ferns, clover, dandelions, ragweed, wild lettuce? The stuff that supplemented the terrariums of third and seventh grade. When I was married, I did a better job of keeping them at bay. Sore knees, back, forearms, and a full five-gallon bucket were proof, before I switched to chemicals, weed-whacking, and then lethargy.
Look, I’m no moron. I grew up in the city but was school-bused to the monochromatic suburbs. We took field trips into heathered clearings and lustrous vernal pools. We studied ecology for a weekend at Alton Jones Camp. I even took AP Bio 2 in high school. So I can appreciate the up-close beauty, the translucent symmetry of leaves—midrib, veins, margins—or the golden ratio stretching from sunflower seeds to acorn caps to the spiraling arms of the Milky Way in a clear night sky. Until something dark and with too many damn hinged legs springs upon my socks. So fuck that.
My father is a mason: an artist of brick and stone and mortar. I brag that his company helped construct the Tropical Rainforest in Franklin Park Zoo and the late-80s renovations of Park Street Station—the tourist gateway to Boston Commons and the Public Gardens. I knew he could lend his expertise to this less grand botanical project of building a brick patio. After my ex-wife mapped and measured the optimal area in the grass of our backyard, my father and I transported the sod to less fertile parts of the lawn and piled the first layer of overly-fertile soil next to the one-car garage, trusted only as a shed. How far did we dig? Four feet? Six? Deep enough that earthworms and shredded snake skins gave way to grey matter untouched by the love of light or rainwater directly—enough that the tops of the three rubber bins became visible. My honey-do project suddenly becoming one of the Egyptian-esque, residential excavations popular in every sitcom of my youth.
Opening the first we found plates, cups, saucers, and other dishware. Not fine china, but they appeared expensive-adjacent in the way of antiques. My father thought I could wash and keep them or sell them on eBay or at a flea market. But after finding the second was filled with antique baby clothes—crotched bonnets, frilly dresses, feminine blue overalls, white booties—and an airtight metal tin the size of a large bread box…Fuck. That.
Holding our breath, we sealed them both back up, placed them on the growing pile of debris removed from the attic, basement, and garage-shed. We left the third—whose top was only just showing from the left edge of the site—untouched. We never spoke of it again. Pounds of crushed gravel were dumped, wheel-barrowed, shoveled, and spread over the browning earth. Two grades of stone dust were finely applied over that, and into the topmost layer red bricks were wedged without mortar. We bought the expensive teak tables, the set of six chairs, a matching umbrella with a black base stand—which lasted longer than our marriage, the children we never had—and I’ve spent most of my time inside the comfort of my home.
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