Liquid nurturing provides sweet serenity

A grandmotherly woman was standing in her front yard, hose in hand, waving the nozzle over her grass. Droplets of water sparkled in the sun. Then she moved on to the next square foot.

I thought: Geez. That must be the least efficient way, ever, to water an entire lawn. Doesn’t this woman own a sprinkler?

Then I looked at her face. She wore a smile of pure bliss. As I walked by, she waved cheerfully at me, getting my shoes only slightly damp.

That’s when it smacked me like a firehose in the face: People don’t water by hand because it’s efficient. They water for therapy.

Yes, after hours of scientific observation, I have come to the conclusion that watering is the nation’s leading stress-management technique. Standing there with a hose, waving streams of water around in attractive, arching patterns, administering cool doses of life-giving H2O – that’s an American form of zen meditation.

This insight dawned on me ridiculously late, because I am immune from the charms of watering. I am too impatient to stand around with a hose and separately water every rose bush, much less every bloody blade of grass.

I grew up in the arid West, and I spent every summer experimenting with ever-more-sophisticated sprinklers that could be left alone for three hours.

The oscillating sprinkler, waving back and forth like a fan, was one of my favorites. Then came something that looked like a tea kettle. It sprayed an enormous circle which could be adjusted through a complicated series of controls into an oval or various ellipsoids.

Then came the ultimate sprinkler gadget, a miniature tractor-like contraption that slowly “walked” around the yard on a path that followed the hose itself. I would spend an hour carefully arranging the hose in a complicated matrix and then go back out seven hours later to discover that the tractor had jumped the track in the first 15 minutes and marched off down the street, where it was humping the wheel of the neighbor’s pickup.

So it was with an enormous sense of satisfaction that I finally, about ten years ago, achieved my childhood dream: an in-ground sprinkler system. Now, we could merely set the timer and the entire yard would be watered, thoroughly and automatically.

Imagine my surprise, when, the very next day, I found my wife out in the garden with a hose, showering her salvias.

“You don’t need to do that!” I said, alarmed. “The sprinkler system gets all of this!”

“I know,” she replied, serenely. “I just like doing this.”

“Do you know how much that sprinkler system cost?” I said, offended on its behalf.

“Yes,” she said, placidly. “But I’m just going to water these flowers now. Go away.”

I didn’t get it, I really didn’t.

Only years later, after seeing that neighbor peacefully watering her lawn, do I truly grasp the appeal. Watering is an act of nurturing – and nurturing always feels good.

The symbolism is too obvious for even me to miss. Water is what every living thing requires, depends upon, thirsts for. To be the agent of that water, to be the person showering the life-giving liquid down from on high, well, that makes you feel just a little bit like Mother Nature her own self.

I was seriously thinking of trying out these theories on my grandmotherly neighbor. I’d ask her: Don’t you feel nurturing when you water? Don’t you feel like Mom Nature? Don’t you feel like Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, sowing green in your wake?

She would probably just look at me and say, “Oh, I don’t know about all of that. All I know is, it feels like a good thing to do on a warm summer evening.”

Yeah. That’s what I said in the first place. It’s good therapy.