Back Yards and Front Yards

After being on the island of Maui for the past 3 weeks, I’m back on the mainland! Over the next few weeks, between NLP updates, look for stories here about my trip. Aloha!

When I was very young, I would go with my Granddad on early morning walks.

He would soundlessly wake up at 4 a.m. every day. He’d get his dog’s leash and his dog ready to go, and we’d be off, walking through his sleeping Albuquerque subdivision.

They had sidewalks. Some people had lawns made entirely of rock. There were evergreens of every sort. There were mimosa trees. Some people had a tiny patch of grass in their front yards.

Granddad knew everyone in the neighborhood. He would point out each house and tell me stories about the owners. He would tell me about the flagpole they installed and how they hit solid rock when they were digging the hole for it. He would tell me about the cats in the neighborhood.

He pointed out one house with a perfectly coiffed lawn and landscaping. There were steps up to the front porch, and the house was set back further than the other houses. They had a friendly St. Bernard and grandkids. They had suffered through diseases and disease treatments. I imagined that people like this must be very tall and stout.

We rounded the corner and were back at his house, ready for breakfast.

Granddad had a great backyard. He had a clothesline – something I’d never seen anywhere else. He had a small flat area, and then a terraced step all the way around the outside of the yard. And there was a shed with all kinds of tools in it.

The fence wasn’t a fence at all. It was a cinderblock wall about 4 feet high. You could easily see into the neighboring yards, with their extensive vegetable gardens and little dogs.

In one back corner, there was a staircase. Granddad was a woodworker, so he probably built it. It fit perfectly between the place where the two walls met.

If you climbed it, you could meet the folks who lived there. They had a beautiful back yard, with lots of plants to hide in and around if I wanted to be by myself. If I wanted company, there was a giant dog, or the kids who lived there would play with me. As long as I knocked on the back door, the tiny grandmother who lived there said I could come in anytime. We would talk while she rolled the dough for a pie and the oven warmed up. Sometimes her husband would come into the kitchen and talk, too.

One morning, I asked Granddad to show me where the tiny grandmother lived. He showed me the familiar house – the one with the perfectly appointed yard and the people with sorrows and a St. Bernard.

This is one of the many experiences I was hoping for in Maui: connecting with old and new friends in ways that helped me “forget” their front yards and the assumptions I had about them. I wanted to see their back yards by interacting directly with them – beyond assumptions – and get on with just being friends and enjoying each other.

While I was there, I met with a group of 15 advanced NLPers at Tom and Bobbi Best’s workshop. My mom was there. My good friends Mary Ann Reynolds and Virginia Brodie were there. There was a group of 4 Austrians there, too, including Daniella. And I met some people with the strongest Aloha I’ve ever seen. I look forward to sharing stories about these people and the beautiful place of Maui soon.