Pulling Weeds

Getting to the Root of It

The summer I was nine I spent with my grandparents at their house in Essex, CT. They were serious gardeners. I was not. Well, not by choice. That summer I must have weeded their front planting beds for roughly nine million hours.

I did it twice a week and I was there for four weeks. On week two, my grandfather came out, watched my backbreaking effort and said, “You’re doing it all wrong.”

“Wrong! Wrong? Wrong!?!?” I thought to myself.

“Great, how about YOU do it.”

This was, of course, internal dialogue. Verbalizing this lack of interest in the proper way to weed would have resulted in a much larger area to work and the lack of advice that might possibly help.

My Poppop leant down next to me, grabbed the crabgrass by its sturdy wide neck and pulled firmly, slowly, up. Along with the green tops came dirty hairy roots three times as long.

“That’s how you prevent it from growing back.

Or at least buy yourself a few weeks,” he said.

This advice stuck. It didn’t help me much that summer because I was given the opportunity to use my new found skills in the back planting beds as well.

However, this morning, as I was weeding the hydrangea beds and rose garden, I remembered his advice. I wrapped my fingers around the scruffy necks of curly dock and dandelion and slowly pulled up scraggly tangles of long roots.

I love getting to the root of things.

Finding the etymology of a word, the origin of a troublesome mood, the source of a conceptual problem. I like digging, becoming an archeologist of anything really– especially issues related to culture and psychology.

I like to think I’m quite skilled in this area, which, after nearly twenty years of therapy including cognitive, behavioral, psychoanalysis, past life regression, astrological and metaphysical energy work, I’d hope to be reasonably adept.

However, turns out I am my own biggest blind spot.

Our son Finn sees a wonderful executive functions coach. Her advice has been transformational so I thought why not have Leo go for a session and see if she can help him with his organizational struggles and motivational challenges.

Leo and I went. She asked what we wanted to focus on. Leo explained how he has trouble organizing his things and thoughts because he feels like he’s in a rush. She asked if we were in a rush at those times.

He said no but I mentioned that we do tend to pack a lot in and we often need to get from one place to the next in a timely manner, which I mentioned does sometimes happen with a bit of stress attached.

But I added, we’ve made lists and tried deep breathing.

She said that was great, which felt like the equivalent of a gold star stuck on my forehead until she added, but it’s hard to practice mindful breathing when you feel like there’s a time constraint.

Gold star removed.

She asked if there was anything else. I said, yes, Leo is definitely not a lazy boy at all but it seems in the morning or after school when I ask him to practice guitar or piano, there’s this exhausted head roll/ sigh and he doesn’t step into it wholeheartedly.

She turned to me and smiled.

This made me horribly nervous. “Did you play piano as a kid?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “Did you enjoy it?” She asked. “No, not really,” I answered.

“If you had a choice to go out and play with your friends or practice piano, which would you have rather done?” she continued. “Friends,” I answered.

She didn’t say it critically at all, but I felt like an idiot.

He’s eleven so he’s going to act like an eleven year old. It’s not a lack of caring. And it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be required to practice, but you can’t expect him to want to do it too. Not yet.

Turns out I am at the root of quite a few of their problems.

So now I get the privilege of being the metaphorical weed and figuring out how to pull my own shortcomings out by their big gnarly hairy roots.