I long for imperfection. I realized this recently as I stood in the produce section of the supermarket watching a determined group of women huddled around a corn bin. With dogged expressions and mighty grips, they proceeded to shuck the tightly wound husks from nearly every ear of corn. If an exposed little 10-cent stalk wasn’t absolutely perfect — if it had even a small kernel-less tip — back it went into the heap, to shrivel in half-naked rejection in the open air.
I’m not up to this life, I thought, pushing my cart to less demanding veggies. My sense of inadequacy in the hunt for the perfect cob is only the tip of the iceberg for me. Maybe it’s nostalgia for the folksy, unpretentious neighborhoods of my Kansas City childhood, but I find myself in middle age looking for reassuring signs of flaws, defects and imperfection. But in the suburban sprawl I now live in, I feel as if I’ve wandered into some weird nightmare existence called PerfectWorld. In this scary land, everyone and everything is carefully, professionally, expertly created and maintained. House Beautiful, Life Perfect inside and out. There is so much glitz and artifice around, I feel trapped in Disneyland.
As I meandered home through the tended fields of suburban lawn and gardens, I wondered whatever happened to yards redolent with clover and dandelions? The kind I used to laze around on in the 1950s and eat — unperfected by pesticides and weed killers?
Virtually every tree on every lawn is surrounded with a decorative brick or stone border and fumed into a mini flower garden. Every edge is perfectly shaped, no wayward sprouting branches allowed. No unplanned growth, no renegade weeds, no unexpected flower is allowed to assert itself in spring exuberance anywhere. Armies of sweating lawn-care laborers are everywhere, mowing, raking, trimming and shaping our modest neighborhood lots. On the 4th of July, every Miracle Gro-drenched flower stands up with patriotic fervor to salute the perfection of the neighborhood.
It’s a claustrophobic world where nature’s spontaneous forces have been almost entirely squelched. I am exhausted, even drained, from looking at it all — this world of demanding, ruthless glory.
But on my way home from that grocery store corn shucking, I stumbled onto an older enclave called Prairie View that restored my faith in homey imperfection. Getting out of my car to walk beneath its gnarled old tree-lined canopy, I suddenly felt at home. I reveled at wide, friendly expanses of yard filled unashamedly with crab grass and clover, dandelions and Queen Anne’s Lace. Even better, true signs of life were everywhere: tricycles overturned in driveways, garden hoses strewn across the grass, not yanked and coiled onto tight little wheels. Charming, but less than picture-perfect houses sporting the old painted gray porches of my youth seemed to speak to me joyfully of homemade pickles and long Sunday dinners with easygoing folks. To my delight, there was even an older guy in an undershirt “settin’ a-spell” on one of the porches. He hollered out “Her-lo! Hot enough for ye?” to my delight. The look of cheerful living, not militaristic upkeep, pervaded everything. Homey, friendly, forgiving, imperfect.
We desperately need Prairie Views — places that perfection hasn’t yet regimented, that remind us of the glory days of community, before the rise of suburban glitz. I feel better knowing there are a few Prairie Views left — the “perfect” antidote for the ongoing stress of perfection.
When I got home I stared at my sprouting weeds, my sagging soffit, where birds have nested, and inside, at the strip of upside-down kitchen wallpaper I’ve never gotten around to redoing, with a new self-acceptance. I suddenly understood why I crave imperfection: It reminds me of myself.
