Drinking Buddies

Dutch Beer rough style

The year was 2010 and my idea was to create a "dry creek bed" from the front porch extending "downstream" to curve around a circular planter I installed a few months beforehand at the corner of the house (with a juniper to hide cables "climbing" the structure in an unnatural way).

The functionality of the dry creek bed was to raise the elevation at the level of the east-facing external wall (with a small brick retainer extended vertically around the basement window to eliminate any low spot while preserving precious morning sunlight) so that water would not pool near the house and percolate its way into the basement, which was damp when we bought the house (the actual cause of which we did not find out until at least a year later and was - hilariously but expensively - totally unrelated to the elevation at the corner of the house).

The aesthetic of the dry creek bed was to provide something of non-grass visual interest in that small quadrant near the house and also to provide additional planting space for vegetables. In those days everything in this middle-class neighborhood was grass and lawnmowers and the usual stuff all around. We put in a garden in the front yard and could hear the clicking tongues of the passers-by that first year. Gypsies, to be sure, had moved into the neighborhood. But we only had good sun in the front, especially after the twin massive oaks fell on the house the year before. It was not a political statement, but rather a solar statement.

As it turned out, in the dry creek bed we had at least two large, heavily-producing tomatillo plants, some plucky and determined grape tomato bushes, and a very robust Japanese eggplant that fired off dozens of green torpedoes that one glorious summer.

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On the appointed day the dump truck arrived with our dirt and two sizes of river rock. I saved money by combining them in one load. I lost money by being forced to spend valuable days separating two sizes of river rock from dirt.

In those days I had the added physical fortitude of a hearty daily commute importantly including several mad dashes to each leg of the journey. House down the hill to 17L bus stop. Pentagon Station rushing down to Metro. Change trains and run to catch the Orange line at L'Enfant. Finally...dash over from the Capitol Hill station to 203 Cannon. It seemed just like a daily routine, but in retrospect it was the kind of cardio workout that people pay for.

Still, when it came to extracting the sod and digging the channel for the dry creek bed I felt the exhaustion of one flaccidly thrusting behind a desk rather than a plow. As usual, I was out there alone as she cared for the small children. They popped their heads out a few times. Alas, the heat and the work digging sod produced a flame that could only be extinguished with a very cold half-liter can of Dutch Pilsner-style beer. From the photograph you can see one already discarded in what might soon become a pile. She came out, the youngest, with her sippy-cup to watch daddy with his sippy can. Cordless drill. Family man.

You spend part of your life building and another part of your life looking at what has been built. But there are no cues as to when one begins and ends and another takes its place. Sometimes when you look back you see yourself exhausted with a Dutch pilsner beer in your hand and a pile of dirt on your driveway. And that which you once cursed becomes a kind of savior.

Death comes as a shocking stranger, upsetting the order that you thought you have created. Upsetting your plan, which is anachronism. Holding a timetable, a ledger balancing what you have given and what has been given you. But at the same time brooking no argument or discussion.