Middle age is really all about maintenance, my mother once said. I was a teenager when she said this and I was helping her scrape the peeling paint off her house, which would later burn down. You spend your life accumulating things, she said, and then you have to maintain them. Your house, your car, your body. You have to maintain your children, too, and your parents. This seemed sadder to me then than it does now. I don’t like trimming the hedges, but I feel anchored by the chore. Maintenance is the tax I pay on this life, I think. And that is why I want to do it by hand, with heavy shears.
