The Pink-Haired Boy

Hey, Good Morning; it’s Tyler Head.

Another week of being with people. Gahhhlee.

My sister is coming to town this weekend for her birthday. I enjoy time with her. She and I lived a lot of life together in our early days on earth. She feels at home. She makes me laugh. She’s probably one of the funniest people I know. But I wouldn’t tell her that.

How was your week? What’d you learn? Eat any cool food? What coffee are you drinking? Tea? Books?

I am reading a book called The Good Earth by Pearl Buck.

I hope this Friday's writing finds you well - this has evolved over the week. But I feel it’s part of a bigger lesson I am learning; to laugh at myself more often and play a little lighter. I think this pink-haired boy who lives down the road has been teaching me this implicitly for months.

A young pink-haired boy lives two blocks down the street from me, and he’s always hanging out in his front yard. He might be a painter.

His home sits on a corner of two streets. The front door faces a road that runs east to west. The traffic on this road increases significantly from 7:00 am to 9:00 am and 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm—when people move back and forth to their place of work. Between those hours, there is a steady stream of cars.

The front yard he hangs out in is roughly 20 feet by 20 feet, with a sidewalk splitting the middle leading up to the house's front door. There are usually some larger toys sprinkled near the front of the house. On the southeast corner of the lot, there is a stop sign, which is often a prop for the boy with pink hair's front yard activities.

His front yard activities that are most frequent are the following: rocking out with a guitar, complete with a headset and a cape. Sprinting down the sidewalk and climbing up and down the stop sign for time. And last but certainly not least, this one, I haven't quite figured. He paces up and down the sidewalk that splits his front yard with vigor and purpose, hands folded behind his back, looking left and right. It’s as if he is solving the world's problems on 20 feet of decaying cement.

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On a run around our neighborhood a few weeks back, I looped by the house where the pink-haired boy lives. It was pretty early in the morning; not much was happening at this time, the sun was not yet visible, but an orange and yellow hue stretched across the east. As I ran north down the street along the east side of his home, I thought to myself, here is a front yard where the imagination of a young boy is challenged to think creatively, pick up what’s around and make something—an easel of opportunity—a place to dream. The yard is nothing exceptional either, but indeed an easel and a place to be noticed. It is where a passerby like me watches in hopeful anticipation of what it looks like to be a child again.

As I made my way past the house, still heading north, I noticed the backyard.

The backyard was a jungle. Right out of Jurassic Park, dinosaur bones might be buried back there. A silver chain link fence lined the property, and grass poured over the edges like Giraffe at the zoo. Thorny shrubs were poking their way through the chain link fence. Also, towards the back northwest corner of the yard, I noticed what looked like an old aluminum swingset - I could barely make it out, but the top of an aluminum a-frame was visible through the jungle.

What a contrast.

I'd driven by, walked by, and run by the pink-haired boy's easel for months. Hardly ever thinking about the rest of the lot, the house he retreats into sits on. But here it was, here I was, standing toe to toe, eye to eye with a backyard that had ceased to be tended to.

A backyard with what used to be much life, play, and joy to be had - but is now overtaken by its surroundings and swallowed whole by a lack of attention and intention.

It'd be easy for me to pass blame, judge, or make assumptions about how it has come to be that way. However, that serves no one, and we need less of that.

This leaves me, us, with this, how courageous this young pink-haired boy is to find space to create, dream, and be seen. To take up his easel.

How wild and normal it is to leave our backyards untended - a place that few people see and even fewer go to. Unless you live on the corner of two streets and have a chain-link fence.

What does taking up your easel look like? Even in the midst of a messy backyard?

What does play look like for you? Sound like? Feel like?

The backyard was taller than the boy.

Where have we ceased tending to the tall grasses of our backyard?

Where in our own lives have we believed that tending to the backyard has to be done alone?

Who can you invite into the backyard?

Maybe even ask if they know of any tools to help shape it. Uncover that old aluminum swing set and perhaps even find some flowers.

May you be encouraged that playing in the front yard is just as much of a gift as tending to the messiness of the back. One seems to be quite fun, while the other may require help from others. Both are valuable.

May you be reminded that in our playing in the front yard and being tended to in our messiness, we grow in the practice of being with and being be’d with.

What a gift.

Talk again soon!

Thanks for being you.

Just a reminder: If this provokes a response in you — feel free to type it out, send it over, and I’ll read it. Or type it out and save it for later.

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