Out Back

I've had quite a few people ask about the essay I wrote and then read at the BYU-Idaho Pre-Professional Conference. So, I guess this is a good place to put something like that. Easily accessible for all.


Out Back

The Japanese Maple
The red lacy leaves cast pink shadows on my bare, freckled arms and legs. I sit on a soft mattress of dead leaves from the past several years. When was the last time anyone raked under here? It’s impossible to say. Three flat cement slabs stacked on top of each other the width and length of cinderblocks serve as the perfect throne in my Japanese maple palace. I am queen over the land of Backyard, and my servants are the baby spiders the size of grains of sand. My soldiers are the black ants that aren’t much bigger than the baby spiders. My field hands are the potato bugs that are as big as my pinkie nail.

Next to me sits a tiny plastic tea cup—cream with a small pink flower painted on one side—and a matching plate. The cup holds two tablespoons of rainwater from the wheelbarrow that sits beside the house. Specks of dirt float to the top, pieces of beauty bark and tiny rocks sink to the bottom. I pretend to sip the water, letting it touch my lips and run down my chin to absorb into my pastel pink Ariel and Eric T-shirt. I put the cup back on its plate and wipe my lips clean with the back of my hand.

I stand. I am the only one in my family short enough to stand in the Japanese maple palace. I am seven. The top of the dome branches barely graze my head, working as a comb on my copper hair. I look up through the thick branches and leaves. Too thick to see the sky, I gently spread them apart with my fingers.

“Yup. Looks like rain,” I say, though no one is there to hear me. “I better gather enough food for the rainy season.”

I don’t know how I know when the “rainy season” is, for every season in Western Washington is rainy season. I part the wall of leaves and prickly branches and run to the deck to get a Cool Whip bowl that had held apple slices earlier in the day. Just off the deck is a planter box with a small patch of chives poking up through the sienna brown dirt. I grab a handful, throw them into the bowl, and run back to my palace in just enough time to evade the first signs of raindrops.

“It’s a real feast,” I say as I eat the chives. I don’t particularly like them, but they are edible, which is good enough for me.

Outside my little fortress the rain gets heavier, beating down all around me. For a few seconds I am safe, but as the leaves get wet and begin to sag, my roof leaks and wets my hair.

Trampoline Games
“Marco!”

“Polo!”

I am kneeling in the center of the trampoline with my eyes closed. My four cousins Jason, Brianne, Nicole, and Pamela, and my sister Stephanie surround me. I can feel their every move, but I can’t tell where they are. The July sun has already fallen behind the trees, homes, and fences that surround my backyard, but the air is still thick, heavy, muggy. “Marco!” I yell.

“Polo!” everyone responds, but I still can’t tell exactly where they are. I thrust my body to the left, but no one is there. I lunge forward, but once again, I do not touch anyone. Someone moves behind me, but I barely miss his or her leg. Nicole giggles, but I can’t tell from which direction she is laughing.

“Marco!”

“Jason, Brianne, Nicole, it’s time to go,” Aunt Nancy hollers from the deck above us. They protest, but Aunt Nancy shakes her head. “No, we have to get up early tomorrow for baseball.”

Stephanie, Pamela, and I are left, but Marco Polo isn’t nearly as fun with only three. Soon Pamela, too, leaves. Stephanie joins the adults in the living room—it happens more and more as she approaches her thirteenth birthday, now only a month away, and wants to feel older. Although I am nine and we still have much in common, she likes to pretend that she is a great deal older and wiser than me.

The shadows in the backyard become larger and the sky deepens to a navy. I get off the trampoline and lay beneath it on the cool grass. I feel more out here than inside where, even with four fans blowing, the humid air reaches ninety degrees. I pinch the grass in my toes and spread my arms out wide, then turn to lie on my stomach. The blades of grass tickle my nose and cheeks, but I just lay there, absorbing the cool, clean scent of the freshly cut lawn.

Rocket’s Red Glare
The fog is thick, but we can still see to the other side of the yard. The Kay and Bryan girls huddle together on the deck while we wait to welcome the year two thousand. This year will be busy. I will become a teenager. Justin will return from his mission to Los Angeles in April, Aaron will go on his mission the week after to Tokyo. But that is only if we make it through this New Year’s Eve alive.

Aaron sits on the roof, waiting to “drop the ball,” which is really a glow-in-the-dark Nerf football on a string that reaches from the chimney to a rock on the opposite end of our backyard. Brother Bryan has a “fireworks” show, which is really two dozen model rocket engines wired to a board that spell out Y2K. He has spent all afternoon working on the presentation, which has only expanded his ego and made him giddier as the clock ticks toward midnight.

I can see my breath in the night, and a shiver spreads through my body. Only a minute left. Soon, thirty seconds. Finally Aaron drops the ball. It bounces slowly down the rope. Around us, neighbors are setting off fireworks and singing choruses of “Auld Lang Syne,” but we are still waiting for our ball to reach the end of the rope. At last it arrives, but our light show does not go off. Brother Bryan and Dad, disappointed, realize the battery to set off the display isn’t strong enough.

I hear the roar of an engine as Aaron pulls the Jeep into the backyard. The fireworks around us have stopped, but the Kay and Bryan girls are still clutching each other in the cold January air.

“No, Kevin. Not the car,” Mom says, but Dad doesn’t seem to care.

Dad touches the wires to the car battery, and in one giant blast, the rockets spring from the board, never revealing the neatly crafted Y2K, and shoot toward the deck. Eight of us, all girls, dive for the deck as the model engines barely miss our heads and land on the other side of the house.

“Happy New Year!” Brother Bryan shouts jovially. I look at my watch. It’s 12:14.

The Old and the New
Masses of tangled blackberry bushes strangle the practically dead raspberry bushes that separate my yard from the greenbelt behind our house. We haven’t been able to pick raspberries for two years because the thorny blackberry bushes have overtaken almost half of the yard. But Justin, home from his mission this week, is ready to tackle a new kind of devil: the infamous, berryless vines.

I open the sliding door one day to find Justin, machete in hand, swishing back and forth like a samurai warrior. He has been out there all day but has made little progress. Very little. A small patch has been cleared, but he has not yet reached the raspberries. Three days later I spot the poles that once marked the raspberry bushes. All I see is a brown, tangled mess. The blackberries have murdered my raspberries.

Justin spends weeks outside trying to salvage what he can of the once wonderfully landscaped yard, but we soon find there is no hope. Mom and Dad surrender to bulldozers and Rota tillers. We build a gray brick wall stretching almost all the way across the yard so that our backyard now has two levels. An antique barrel and an old hand pump serve as a channel for a small rock waterfall from the top level to the bottom level, where we have a small pond. Dad fills it with goldfish, but they never last long between becoming a delicious snack for our cat, and getting sucked up into the pump.

We keep the three maple trees, including my Japanese maple palace, but we get rid of the apple tree and seven or eight rhododendron bushes. We also demolish our small bird cemetery, where three of our birds were once buried. Painted rocks had even served as headstones, but now the bird corpses are lost and have been covered by a metal shed.

After weeks of sore limbs and dirt-crusted fingernails, the work is done. I miss the old backyard, the one that looked like an exotic jungle, but we are at last able to relax in a beautiful yard without worrying about blackberries conquering the trees and grass. The bulldozers have moved out and the pallets that once held the bricks have been taken to the dump; birds, squirrels, and occasional deer return to find homes in the woods just beyond our property line. We spend our summer nights sitting on our deck next to candles sipping homemade strawberry lemonade, admiring our work, our masterpiece.

October
The large red maple tree in the center of the backyard has become brilliant since the school year began four weeks ago. The yard is littered with leaves, but the trees seem to have millions yet to shed. Mom assigns me the task of raking the backyard, a job normally tedious in the usual Washington rain, but while October just begins, the sun still shines through the leaves. I have four hours of homework to do, a lot for the first month of tenth grade, but I stay outside as long as I can while the sun hangs just above the horizon, refusing to completely disappear.

To and fro, back and forth, I swing the rake as I gather the leaves. There are too many to count. The vibrant yellows and browns and reds and oranges gather to a pile slowly, for I am in no hurry. In my ears the wind whips, but the whistling sounds more like music, and for a few moments I am lost in a trance. I hear the gentle notes of a song I played in band that very morning, “October” it was called, and it is the most beautiful song I have heard. The warm notes seem to manifest themselves in the colorful leaves. The yellow is the euphonium, gentle but bright. The orange is the flute, lively and powerful. The red is the oboe, prominent and warm. The brown is the bass clarinet, my instrument, deep and soothing.

I awake from my dream and see that I am only raking leaves, but it still seems much more than that. The autumn wind pulls a few more leaves from the branches as I finish raking the leaves in a pile in the greenbelt. Although “October” is only in my mind, it connects me to the leaves, to the trees that have grown as I have grown.

Beginning and End
July is normally warm, but this July is unbearable. The muggy air makes breathing nearly impossible, and I can’t contain the sweat dripping from my forehead. My white breathable cotton skirt makes the heat somewhat easier to deal with, but I still feel sticky. Although I am glad it is Saturday and I don’t have to work, I long for the air-conditioned daycare where I teach twelve rambunctious toddlers in order to have enough money to return to BYU-Idaho in the fall.

Small, round tables and plastic chairs from the church building fill our backyard. Guests are all around, sitting, standing, trying desperately to hide from the early afternoon sun in the shade of the trees. On the steps between the lower and upper levels of our backyard sits an archway decorated in white tulle and red and yellow daisies. A path of red and yellow rose petals leads from the deck to the archway. Long rectangular tables on the opposite side of the lawn are piled with fruits, vegetables, cheeses and crackers, punch, bottles of water, and a three-tiered cake. Aaron and Justin stand at the grills, ready to spring into action when called upon.

Stephanie pushes PLAY on her CD player as eight-year-old Sierra walks out of the house, down the deck steps, and to the archway where Brian and Bishop Van Gieson stand. She smiles at Brian, soon to be the only father Sierra has ever known. Sarah follows in her dress of cream and red, a bouquet of yellow and red daisies in her hands. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. After nearly ten years as a widow my oldest sister is giving her little girl a dad. Tears stream down my cheeks as the sun beats in my eyes, but the sun is not responsible for the tears. My heart swells with excitement and joy at the thought of a new addition to the family.

The ceremony is short; the kiss at the end is long but delicate; and Sarah, Brian, and Sierra all seem to be glowing—and not just from the sweat running down their faces. I realize this is the beginning and the end. It’s the beginning of a new relationship, a new marriage, a new family. It’s the beginning of a new way of life. It’s the end of years of sadness and pain and loneliness. And it’s the end of my adventures in this backyard.

Home
Chlorinated water shimmers in the scorching August sun. At the proper angle I can see excess sunscreen oil floating on the surface, a sure sign that at least one of the pasty Kay kids will burn. Probably me. We haven’t all been together in years. We are no longer children being raised by our parents, though one cannot say we are adults either. More like heathens. Even the so-called “parents” forget civility as they lower themselves down the ladder into the four-foot-deep swimming pool. Ten of us over the age of twenty, though not one capable of acting his or her age. We resort to childish behavior, flipping a switch to “survival of the fittest” mode.

A year has passed since Sarah’s backyard wedding and my parent’s move from Washington to Utah. This backyard is much different from the luscious Washington green. In Washington our yard was enclosed with a dark, rotting fence on one side, but thick green trees and towering rhododendron bushes on the others. Our Utah backyard is fenced in all the way around. Houses and trampolines and pools peek over the fence, making me feel exposed to nosy neighbors. Only a few trees line the fence in sporadic places, and the rest of the yard is grass. Brown, scratchy grass. But as we splash about in the pool, playing “Chicken” on Justin’s and Aaron’s shoulders and creating whirlpools, I try not to think about being in Utah instead of Washington. I’m not ready to accept the change.

“AHH!” Mom screams and flails her arms and legs as Justin hoists her up out of the water. With a grunt, Justin swings her over to Aaron’s open arms. They’re playing catch. Mom is the ball. Though she calls for help, fits of laughter, side-aches, and the possibility of drowning from inability to breathe forbid us from joining the Kay Lifeguard Squad. Sierra, nine, and Talmage, nearly four, stare wide-eyed at the sight, unable to comprehend how anyone could do such a thing to “HoneyGram,” wondering how come their parents don’t jump in to save her.

Finally, Mom says between gasps for breath and bursts of laughter, “Okay! Stop it! Ouch!” Two more tosses, and the boys thrust Mom into the water with a splash. She emerges from the water coughing, but laughing all the same. A knot twists in my gut from laughing so hard.

Our pool play comes to an end as Mom announces we need to get ready to take family pictures. Women in bright pink, men in navy, little girls in purple, little boys in light blue. It had only taken us three hours to find a color pallet, no thanks to Target’s forty-five shades of red and blue and purple and yellow, all in different sizes. We dress in our shirts and khaki pants and attempt to look like we haven’t been playing like barbarians in a swimming pool all afternoon.

Mom reminds us to stand up straight and not to make silly faces, but we can hardly resist when Dad sets the timer on the camera and runs like a fugitive to join the group before the flash. Eventually Mom recruits a neighbor from across the street to take the pictures for us, but now the four grandchildren under the age of four have had enough and have become fussy. Amid the cries and complaints of the grandchildren, the children and spouses cannot be disheartened. We poke fun, pinch, tickle, and tease. Though we try and try, not one of the pictures turns out perfectly.

Through the taunts and laughter and squeals and wails, Sarah says to her nine-year-old daughter, “Why don’t you tell everyone what I told you today?” Sierra’s face flashes magenta and hides her face behind her mom’s arm as fourteen faces look to her. Sarah looks up at the now quiet group and says, “We’re going to have a baby in April!”

Screams from the girls and shouts from the boys echo through the backyard as we embrace one another.

“How are you feeling?”

“Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“It’s been ten years since you’ve been pregnant!”

Everyone has endless comments and questions for the expectant mother. While the girls continue chatting and speculating on the sex of the baby and the precise due date, Dad and Justin get on their hands and knees to inspect a wasp nest under the deck. Brian’s eyes twinkle with mischief as he fills the kiddy pool with water from the hose. He makes eye contact with Stephanie, Sarah and me, and then nods in Dad’s direction. Sinister grins spread across our faces. Brian unleashes the water on Dad’s backside. Instant melee. Water flies across the yard. Dad chases Justin around, somehow not noticing that Justin had nothing to do with the plot.

I pause in the midst of the commotion around me, as though a special effects team has slowed time for me. I watch the scene spread before me—Dad and “the boys” wrestling each other for the hose, Mom and “the girls” trying unsuccessfully to stay relatively dry and keep the grandkids from getting pummeled in the battlefield.

We are in a new backyard, one very different from the one in Washington. But the sounds of twelve Kays and three Sandstroms fill the empty unfamiliarity. But for the first time in a year, I start to feel that perhaps, with time, this new backyard could fulfill the same purpose.

And I am home.