“Coming of Age in the Buffers”
by 2026 Diane Lundegaard
The boy’s eyes swept across the cluttered shelves of the hardware store while on his way further into the shop. The eleven-year-old had been there many times, but this was the first time Austin’s mother had sent him for a box of nails. “Nails,” he muttered over and over as if he might forget what he had come for. His mind rested elsewhere and he couldn’t wait to get where it rested.
One of the store’s clerks shot him a glance. “Hey, Austin, how’s it going?” he called out, “be right with you.” The clerk set aside a plastic bag filled with faucet washers that he was about to tag. He then made his way past several stacks of lawn seed blocking the aisle and towards the boy. “He’s a good kid,” said the clerk while nodding his head at one of the customers he passed on his way to Austin, “always helping at home.”
Early that morning Austin’s mother told him that she needed a box of nails.
“What for?” he asked while swiping wisps of brown hair back from his forehead.
“I need you to fix that old flower box. The one hanging lopsided out front.”
Austin clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes. “But I was gonna go hang out,” he said.
So many things needed fixing since his father died. Austin couldn’t help but wonder why all of a sudden that stupid old flower box was so special. Nothing ever got planted in it. Austin had never seen geraniums or petunias growing in it like the neighbors across the street had coloring up their windows.
On his way to the hardware store Austin thought about the buffers, the place where he liked to hang out. On the Island its parkways, even some of the local roads are bordered by forest buffers. They maintain a sense of the country in the Island’s ever-expanding suburbs. They also help keep down traffic noise. Austin’s father told him that.
Austin’s father loved the outdoors. He especially loved hiking. As a boy he hiked in the buffers near the parkway where he grew up on the Island. He introduced the sport to his son and whenever they could they’d visit the buffers close to their home. Austin learned all sorts of things about the woods from his father, like the different species of trees that grew there, pine, scrub oak, sometimes sassafras and many others. His father also taught him how to tell the difference between poison ivy and Virginia creeper vines. Austin still hikes in the buffers, sometimes with friends, but now, mostly alone.
The footpaths that Austin follows in those woods are littered with leaves and fallen twigs that make crunching sounds as he walks or runs on them. Sometimes Austin takes the moss-covered ground because the moss is quiet and soft and fuzzy and collects drops of water that glitter like diamonds and emeralds. In the buffers he can think without the fast pace of life disturbing his mind. Sometimes he thinks about things he doesn’t understand, like why his father had to die and why his mother is always either nagging him or crying. He hears her cry at night when she thinks he’s sleeping. He wonders why everything always needs fixing, and why he’s the one who always had to do the fixing. Unlike all that broken house stuff and all that other stuff, like feelings that sometimes hurt so much, the buffers don’t need his fixing. The buffers have all sorts of neat trees with lots of cool birds in them. Red birds and yellow birds, and even wild turkeys that don’t ask you for anything. Austin likes that he can watch the birds fly up with the clouds. He sometimes sits on a log, watching clouds that change shape effortlessly while they go drifting through blue, his favorite color.
“What took you so long,” asks Austin’s mother. “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You stopped off in those woods, didn’t you?” Without giving him a chance to speak she adds, “Here’s the hammer, now, where’s those nails? When you’re done, come in for lunch.”
Austin left the house. He made his way through the foundation evergreens that mostly hid the front of the ranch. When at the window with the plant box that needed fixing, he found himself staring through its weather pitted and smudged-up glass. He caught sight of his mother sitting alone in the living room. As his eyes steadied on her Austin felt the sickness a child feels when they inherit a problem too big for them to solve.
A bird, perched on a willow branch leaning against the side of the house near where Austin worked, started singing. Austin’s thoughts ebbed and flowed along with the melody of the bird’s song. He thought about his mother, not only about her nagging but also about her cooking. He liked her cooking and he liked the way she smiled while she watched him eat. Austin thought about his father and how much he missed him, and that people sometimes told him that he took after him. He also thought about what he had overheard the store clerk say about his being a good kid. These thoughts gave Austin a sort of grown-up kind of feeling. Along with all these thoughts he also thought about how he felt, the peace he felt when he hung out in the buffers. He would say in later years that the peace he felt there was an abiding sort of peace, one handed from father to son and that it had given him another new kind of a grownup good feeling. He would add that this, his gift of peace, had helped him find his way in a complex and sometimes broken world. That day, long ago, Austin had begun to think with his heart rather than always with his head, a sign of the start of his coming of age.
After fixing what he had to fix and feeling what he had begun to feel Austin thought he might get a plant, maybe some red geraniums for the window box, for his mother, and with that he went back into the house and joined her for lunch.
Diane Lundegaard is a Long Island native, freelance writer and an environmental educator.
