Essays, etc.

Tom O’Connell is a Cape Cod writer, lecturer and educator. He writes the column “On Addiction” for The Cape Codder, served as national correspondent for The U.S. Journal of Drug & Alcohol Dependence, and hosted his own show “It’s Your Life” on Boston’s Channel 25. He teaches writing at Cape Cod Community College and is the publisher of www.sanctuary777.com (Sanctuary Unlimited) where his e-books and nearly 200 of his lifestyle essays on addiction and recovery appear.

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Essay #2 ... Irma The Leaf Woman
by Tom O'Connell

Getting somebody to help with the leaves in my yard seemed like a simple transaction, based on what I interpreted as a logical impulse. Although sometimes an impulse works out for the best, when you want to get help for a project on Cape Cod, the odds for success may be stacked against both you and your impulse. Even if the hiring isn’t such a great problem, the usual challenge is getting the work completed when promised.

A visual reminder of this is the stump in my back yard that was supposed to be removed a few years ago by a young tree expert who assured me that he would be back in a couple of months to take care of this unfinished work. I had paid him for the job up front, and he seemed very sincere. But he turned out to be expert in resisting all my attempts to communicate with him about finishing the job. I finally gave up.

My most recent adventure was also about trees. This time it was not about stumps though; it was about leaves that deciduous trees like my ancient oak drop in the fall in an endless succession. My usual strategy is just to let them drop and later allow the winter wind to blow them into random piles to be dealt with at some unspecified future time.

Ordinarily, I wait until the next spring and summer, or beyond, before dealing with my oak leaves. My tendency is to try to ignore them, and I can usually do that without guilt. This year, however, the newly fallen oak leaves in my yard were not the only problem. The situation was compounded by the batches of leaves that still remained from previous years.

Actually, in recent years all I had done was chew the leaves into smaller pieces with the mower and let piles of them rest against fences where the wind had blown them. But the huge oak tree, which overshadows the back of my house, is a formidable one when it comes to dropping leaves. So this year there was no doubt that some leaf relocation was in order.

The combination of old leaves and new leaves began to haunt me subtly at first, then obsessively, even though I thought I had convinced myself that I liked the “natural” look. Another mitigating factor in my reluctance to rake leaves is that I’m definitely allergic to trees and their leaves. On top of that, I avoid raking because of its painful effect on my shoulder joints. So it’s usually very easy for me to keep putting it off.

Nevertheless, this year the leaves had become a guilt-inducing presence in my yard. I had actually contracted a syndrome that I call leaf guilt! It was amazing to observe how my newly formed leaf guilt began to escalate recently when my neighbors started to beautify their areas. Although I usually take pride in not being a conformist, I began to think about hiring someone for a couple of hours to do some leaf work. Even if I didn’t remove all of the leaves, I could at least have someone spread them around neatly, and perhaps relocate some to the very rear of my back yard.

Around this time, in early May, I was on one of my periodic visits to the self-service laundry when a notice on its bulletin board captured my attention. The simple message in black magic marker asked, “Need Yard Work Done?” At the bottom of the sheet were tabs with phone numbers, so I ripped one off and said, Hey, why not? I’ll check this out.

I called on a Sunday and heard the recorded voice of a woman named Irma. Irma? A leaf woman? Why not? Why shouldn’t a woman be hiring herself out for yard work? In the first move in a prolonged game of phone tag, I called and left a message on her answering machine, telling her I’d be interested in some leaf work. I asked her to give me a call informing me of her hourly rate, and would she let me know if she’d be available for a couple of hours during the week.

On Monday at 8 a.m. the phone rang. This was not a good time for anyone to call me, including Irma. You see, I am no early bird and my throat doesn’t even work well before 10 a.m. So I didn’t pick up the phone and I waited a while before checking my voice mail. Yes, it was Irma. Her message was that she couldn’t do the work on Monday or Tuesday but she’d be available on Wednesday afternoon.

“Leave the address and I’ll be over there around twelve-ish or one-ish,” instructed Irma in an almost military tone, leaving no room for dispute. “I charge $25. an hour but we move fast. And when we leave your yard it will be perfect.”

She sounded confident, positive, and available, so I left a confirming message on her machine saying I could give her two hours work for a total of $50. Then I proceeded to plan Wednesday around the work Irma would do “around twelve-ish or one-ish” that day.

However, I wondered about that word “we.” Would two people split the $25 per hour? I knew I would have to be very clear with her that I was not paying two people $25. per hour each, or $100. for the job. More phone tag ensued, but I remained positive, and with great anticipation I looked forward to having the often postponed leaf work done.

Well, Wednesday came and at twelve-ish there was no Irma. She was not there at one-ish either. In fact, Irma didn’t show at all, and I have to admit I found this a bit irritating and irresponsible. Why hadn’t she at least called and explained?

At 6 p.m. that evening Irma did call. She left a message on my voice mail saying something about being a single parent and that her daughter had experienced an emergency, and she had to drive for four hours each way to deal with it, and no cell phone had been available to her so she could call me. I don’t remember hearing her say she was sorry, and I had to replay my voice mail message a few times to interpret her rapid monologue about her difficult day.

Also, a substantial part of her message was high praise of her own work, and she emphasized that she “guaranteed perfection.” She said she’d come over Thursday morning between 8:30 and 9 and “tear the place apart” with her “expert raker.” She didn’t pose this as a question. It was a direct statement. It was obvious that the word “negotiate” was not part of her vocabulary. And I am a person who doesn’t take domination very well.

The next part of the message from Irma the decision-maker was a set of instructions about getting the money to her. Either I had to be there at 8:30 or 9 to hand it to her or I had to leave it in an envelope. “I don’t want to have to come back again for it because my truck gets very low mileage,” she explained forcefully. “Trust me. If you don’t like the work we’ll come back and do it to your satisfaction.”

Did she actually say she would be at my place at 8:30 or 9 a.m.? She was deciding that with no input from me? Actually, there is no time in the 24 hours that is more inconvenient for me than that time. I wasn’t going to accept her unilateral decision. So I called her back and left a message saying how inconvenient it was, and would she please arrive after 9 “because before that is the worst time for me when I’m getting ready to get out to work.”

She returned my call, and for the first time we were communicating without answering machines or voice mail. However, within moments I was wishing we were still playing phone tag because non-negotiable Irma’s mind was made up. She made it clear that she wouldn’t start the work after nine under any conditions. “I have to come over there at 8:30 tomorrow.” Before it was “between 8:30 and 9.” Now it was 8:30, take it or leave it.

I have met arrogant, overconfident people like Irma before, and it was obvious that arguing with her would be a waste of time. She was committed to doing things her own way, with no outside intervention or persuasion. So I went along.

Instead of telling her I would hold back half of her money until completion of the work, I even agreed to pay her up front before I went to work the next day. And I had pledged to myself after the stump removal episode that I would never again pay anyone the whole amount before a job was finished!

Repeatedly, Irma emphasized how valuable her skill was, and how satisfied I would be with her work. She also said she was bringing “an expert raker” with her, and I knew she thought she was impressing me with this news. The way Irma said the words “expert raker” was how the owner of a gourmet restaurant might discuss a master chef.

Catching Irma’s enthusiasm, and determined to have a positive experience, I began to have visions of this expert raker and Irma conquering my large yard in an hour, and I started thinking of other odd jobs they could do to fill out the agreed time.

Thursday arrived, and I planned my early morning rituals around the 8:30 arrival time Irma the leaf woman had given me. But to my great irritation she showed up at 8:20, and among the words I spoke to myself in the bathroom when I heard the doorknocker were a few words I cannot repeat here. But I gathered my sleepy wits and went to the front door.

I did not find a pleasant Irma there. Actually, she was not even at the door. After knocking, she had apparently then positioned herself several feet away, with her hands on her hips and a major scowl on her face.

This was no friendly leaf woman. Quite the opposite. Irma was tall and very rugged looking, with a prominent chin, and her most obvious quality was her bristling hostility. Now, remember that on all of the phone messages she was friendly and positive, almost obsequious in her delivery. But a radical transformation in her attitude had taken place.

A very different Irma was standing there in my front yard, surveying my property. She reminded me of a Viking queen on the warpath, or perhaps a Celtic one, and she looked ready to go berserk. The only thing that was missing was the metal helmet with the two horns adorning it.

The “expert raker” was there too, already scurrying around; wielding his rake like a Samurai warrior would wield a sword. He was small and wiry. An older man but very adept at what he was doing. He was so adept he was forging ahead without instructions from Irma. But she soon stopped him so she could put all of her energy into her verbal attack on me.

Looking back with an attempt at objectivity, the way Irma attacked me was the way I would expect someone to act who had been cheated in an outrageously fraudulent transaction. But I had not misrepresented the size of my yard or the number of fallen leaves. Irma the leaf woman had never even asked for such information.

In the tirade of words that followed my arrival in the front yard, I have to give Irma credit for avoiding words with four letters, but she managed to get her extreme anger across without them. Among the words I heard her spew in rapid succession were “many dump runs” and “huge yard” and “leaves in your gutters up there” and “pine needles all over the place” and “a 300-dollar job.”

I couldn’t believe what was happening. Instead of a simple transaction that would exchange some leaf raking for 50 dollars in cash I was getting an angry diatribe here on my own property, in front of my own house, at a time of day when I am ordinarily in a peaceful, however sleepy, state. Irma’s entry into my life that morning was a disruption of massive proportions, and I told myself I was not about to put up with it. But what would be my strategy with this outraged warrior?

In spite of my early morning haziness, my mind sprung to alertness and told me that I should respond to her in exactly the same way I respond to immature college students in my classrooms. My strategy would be to give Irma the leaf woman a dose of unrelenting firmness and clarity, while trying not to get into a vicious shouting match with her.

I told her I was well aware of how large the yard is, but that there didn’t need to be dump runs. She could dump the leaves down back near the bushes. I told her to forget the gutters and not even touch the front yard. I said she should leave the pine needles alone. “I like them and don’t want to remove them.”

I emphasized more than once that she didn’t need to concern herself with the size of the yard since we had a $50 deal for two hours only, and when she reached the two hour point her work was over no matter how many leaves remained. And, in a burst of what I thought was generosity, I told her I’d let her judge how much work to do and how much to leave behind.

It was not an easy discussion. At each point I made she would move on to the next thing that irritated her, but I held my ground. At one time she sounded like she was giving up on the whole project and was ready to depart, but I didn’t want that outcome, so I said, “Look, we made a deal for two hours work for a total of $50, didn’t we?”

I put the cash in her hand and said, “I have to go now. Do the best you can and leave the rest. Just concentrate on the piles that the wind has built up, and later in the week I’ll probably work on the other leaves myself...”

She reluctantly accepted my suggestions, and a few minutes later when I left the house I was grateful that Irma and her expert Samurai leaf raker were in the back yard and not out front. I was not in the mood for any additional debating, and I knew from my brief experience with her that Irma was capable of heated and perhaps even dangerous confrontations.

As I reflect on that particular Thursday morning, I want to say that if I had to rank all the things in the world that I can’t effectively cope with early in the morning, dealing with someone like Irma would head the list.

As I drove out of the driveway without even looking toward the back yard, I knew that at least some of the leaves would be raked and relocated. And I was actually proud of myself for my stamina in verbal battle with the warrior queen.

When I arrived home late that day I could see that progress had actually been made. Yes, the back yard still had leaves in it, but the largest deposits had been transported to the rear of the property, and although there was much more to be done, I knew I would not have to exhaust myself doing the rest. I could do it in spurts on cool days.

Is that it? Is that the end of the story? Not quite. Two days later, on Saturday at 8:30 a.m., a time when I never answer the phone, the phone rang. Did I have a strong suspicion that it was Irma the leaf woman? Yes. And I was right.

I waited a while before checking the voice mail, and there was Irma’s voice, full of confidence, saying, “I did all the work I could do for that amount of money...for two of us. But I can rake it to perfection for you and make it beautiful. I can do the whole back yard for you for $175 and take those loads of leaves down at the back of your property off to the dump. If you want it done, just call me.”

“No thanks, Irma,” I said to her recorded voice as I put the phone down. “Right now, I’m just grateful that I don’t have to deal with you anymore. Your expert leaf raking is done, thank God, and I got my 50 bucks worth. So I wish you well, Irma, but boy, did you give me an emotional workout!”

Getting someone to help with the leaves in my yard had seemed like it would be a simple transaction. Yet it had brought unexpected complications. However, it isn’t every day that you have a lively encounter with someone like Irma the leaf woman and survive the formidable challenges. For me, she was what they call “a personal growth experience.”

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