Divots
"Karen? Whatcha doin' there?" her 73-year old neighbor called out from the sidewalk.
"Repairing divots!" she said with a laugh.
He laughed, too, and said, "Okay. Yeah. After you flatten the molehill it kinda looks like a divot. When did the mole show up?"
"Yesterday, and this guy's a busy one. Look at this!"
"I am, and it doesn't look good!" the man, whose name was Fred, told her. "You gotta get that little guy or he'll tear your whole yard up."
She nodded and told him she understood.
Karen Moore had grown up in that very house and had just returned a year ago following the passing of her husband. It had been financially impossible to continue living in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on one income, and her only option had been to return and move into her childhood home with her dad. It still seemed surreal to be back in Nebraska after having lived in the greater Boston area for so many years. But here she was in the Omaha suburb of Council Bluffs, a city of some 62,000, and now living alone since her father also passed away just three months earlier.
Karen had just turned 41, the age at which her late mother had died from cervical cancer. Because of that, she was careful to have yearly checkups as well as conduct monthly self checks for breast cancer. She didn't live in fear, but if that could happen to her mom who never smoked or even drank, it could happen to anyone. After her passing, Karen began taking extremely good care of herself as another form of prevention, but cancer or even dying, wasn't her greatest fear.
The thing she wanted most was rapidly slipping away as she entered a new decade of life, and that was to have a family. She'd loved her husband who was a good, decent man. He just wasn't interested in having kids as he saw them as little leeches who sucked time, money, and the very life out of the souls of the adults who cared for them.
He was a bit on the vain side, so hitting a tanning booth was something he routinely did. She'd warned him a time or two, but he mocked her so badly for being a worry wort that she never brought it up again. Not even when he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Just 19 months later he was gone, and she was just shy of being 40 years old with no husband, no children, no life insurance, and no way to afford living in such a high-cost area.
Karen was doing her best to make peace with the hand life had dealt her, but with the passing of her beloved father so soon after losing her husband, it was becoming increasingly challenging to keep on keeping on. She worked full time, ate well, and kept up with the aerobics she loved, and because her father hadn't been well, caring for him made having a social life nearly impossible.
She was now ready to try dating, mostly because she'd had close to two years of watching her late husband slip away before leaving Wellesley. She'd wanted to be hopeful, but his cancer was already at Stage 4a when it was diagnosed, and she knew she had to mentally prepare herself, so when the worst-case scenario unfolded, she thought she might one day look back and realize how valuable it had been to do the mental work along the way.
She'd only ever been with one other man, and she was now in a place where she wanted to start dating and had recently signed up for an online site. So far, she'd been on three dates with three different men with a wide variety of results--all of them bad.
The first had been a disaster. He was 43, relatively good looking, but they had nothing in common. Politics, religion, children, and money. The 'big four'. Polar opposites on them all. He was night and she was day and that was that. Adding salt to the wound, they even hated what the other person ordered for dinner.
The second guy was very handsome and also quite charming. But it turned out that he was also quite married. Disgusted, Karen took a break for two weeks before agreeing to a third try hoping it would be the proverbial charm. He was 50, but that wasn't outside of her comfort range, and he looked good in his photos.
However, the photos he put up of himself on the dating site were a good ten years old, and the man who showed up looked more like her father than a potential mate. She had a cup of coffee with him then excused herself and ended up home alone in tears, feeling like the world was out to get her.
Now, although it was a very minor thing, she had three more black mounds of dirt in her front yard after having tamped down four others, a yard her father considered his pride and joy. It was by far the nicest looking yard in their neighborhood, and the flower beds in front of the house and around a beautiful tree as well as the hedgerow along the driveway were equally beautiful. She felt she owed it to her 'daddy' to at least try and care for it, so she dutifully mowed it by herself and made sure to water the flowers, pull weeds, and do what she could to keep it up.
As she looked at the molehills she asked Fred what he recommended to take care of them.
"Get a couple of traps and catch the little bastard!" he said with a loud laugh.
"You mean kill him?"
"It's a mole, Karen, not a dog. Yes, kill the little SOB. Dead!"
"Is that the only alternative?" she asked a little tentatively knowing that Fred would probably scold her for being too nice or maybe even for being 'woke', something she was not. She just didn't like killing anything that wasn't a spider, a fly, or a roach or some kind of bug inside the house. Okay, she hated snakes, too, but what woman didn't?
"You could pay someone to catch him, but a trap runs about $15 and hiring someone to catch the little critter might be as high as $500."
"Five hundred dollars?" she asked, astounded at the price.
"Maybe. Could be as little as a couple a hundred, but it ain't gonna be no fifteen bucks, that's for dead sure. And if you don't get rid of him soon, he'll tear this whole damn yard up, and your father will rollin' over in his grave!"
He looked over at her then said, "No disrespect intended, of course. Your dad was a good man. As good as God makes 'em."
"Yes, he was, and he loved this yard," she said in agreement even as she struggled to continue believing in God after all that had happened.
"Do you know anyone? To catch the mole?"
"Nope. I'd just set a trap or two and be done with it. But you can find almost anything on the internet, or so my kids tell me. Did you know they're all in their 40s now? Time sure does fly, doesn't it?"
"It really does," Karen replied, ignoring the age comment and hoping he wouldn't press the issue.
"How about you? You gotta be close to 40 yourself, right?"
She bristled a little internally then answered with one word, "Yes."
"Yeah, right. And you don't have any kids yourself, do you?"
She was getting exasperated but smiled and said, "No. Not yet."
"Well, you oughta get started on that pretty soon, 'cause time really does fly. Before you know you'll be 50. Trust me."
He chuckled as though it was funny, but Karen didn't laugh. It just reminded her that time really was flying by for her. She thought she might have another 5-7 years left, and with each passing year, a smaller chance of ever having a baby. And...she didn't even have a boyfriend let alone a husband.
"Well, I guess I'll go see if I can find someone to come over and tell me how much it'd cost to catch this mole."
"Okay. But I could set out a trap for you in less than ten minutes. Probably be dead by mornin'," Fred told her.
"Thank you, but I think I'll try to avoid killing it. For now."
"You kids these days," he replied with a guffaw and a shake of the head. "You ain't one of them vee-gins, are ya?"
