Lift Up

(I’ve moved my posts to Substack so readers can comment if they wish.)

Living with a toddler of 22 months is great fun. Nova is fascinated by all vehicles: buses, delivery and service trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and cars. She’s especially interested in industrial vehicles such as garbage trucks that lift and dump the contents of garbage cans into their cavernous receptacles. She also likes to wave to drivers, who sometimes return the wave.

We take Nova to a park that has spacious grass fields surrounding a baseball diamond, play equipment, and dog parks. Nova has seen lawn mowers, but one day she got to see a really big lawn mower trimming the field. The driver saw her, beeped his horn, and waved. When home, she told her parents and brother about the big mower she saw.

We visit the park on mowing day as often as possible. During a recent trip, special fun was in store. We stopped to watch the big mower as the driver was working the last two lanes of the field. The mower approached, the driver waved and beeped his horn. Industrial mowers that trim large expanses have wings, called decks, which can be lifted off the field individually and rotated up to narrow its profile when necessary. As the driver turned to mow the last lane, he and his mower performed a waving dance for us. He lifted and rotated up the left deck of the mower, waving with his big machine to his audience of Nova, Gary and me. A man walking by remarked, "what a performance!”

Nova said, “lift up,” as she and I used our hands to mimic the waving dance of the mower. When we got home, she introduced her parents and brother to the dance. She said, “big mower” and then demonstrated the motion with her hands and arms and instructed us to "lift up.”

Who would have thought a lawn mower could inspire dance?

There are many “lift up” dance moves. In a favorite dance video, P-Square sings “So put your hands up in the air” and they dance Nova’s “Lift up.”