Mending Fences

I have got to fix that damn fence. If I don't pay attention, my dogs routinely manage to wriggle their way out of the back yard. Actually, it doesn't require much wriggling (luckily for Manny the obese puggle, who can barely fit his ass through an average door these days); one gate sticks and is almost impossible to close, the other is missing the latch and a slat of wood. Sometimes I just forget to make sure my interim measures have not been compromised.

I've become so accustomed to the breaches in my backyard fencing it rarely occurs to me to pay somebody to fix it. That is until I look out my front window and see Leo the lab taunting me as he prowls around on the grass parkway, inches from suburbia's idea of heavy traffic, looking to leave his mark. Or when I open the front door to see Manny, unable to reach the doorbell and a bit too chubby to jump, waiting patiently for me to figure out he's come to call. Why does it never occur to them to go back into the yard and show themselves where I'd actually look for them. Oh, I forgot. They're dogs.

Even though I might have to dip into my down payment for my post-divorce double wide trailer, it's worth it to me to mend that fence. There's always the risk that Leo will cross the street looking for greener parkways, or that Manny will assume nobody's home and wander off to search for the lady with the food. I'm not willing to take that chance.

Lately, I've been feeling the need to mend fences of all kinds. Yesterday, I saw an old friend, a friend I had dropped almost a year ago for reasons that no longer seem to make sense or matter. When two people divorce after a long marriage, the split between the two of them is often just the tip of the iceberg. Friends either choose sides or are asked -- often told -- to choose sides; some straddle the fence -- a well-intentioned strategy but fences buckle under the pressure, and sometimes the collateral damage is unavoidable. This particular friend was straddling, and the wood suddenly splintered and there she was, floating on a makeshift raft between me and my husband, and I just couldn't see her landing on both shores at the same time. A mere acquaintance, maybe; a close friend, not so much.

I see the view from the other side of the fence these days (talk about beating an already dead metaphor to death). I know what it feels like to be collateral damage, to be unceremoniously dumped because somebody can't straddle and is forced to choose. A piece of me gets it -- a big piece -- and another big piece (there's plenty of post-Thanksgiving Potato Head to go around) feels betrayed, furious, abandoned. Who needs that shit?

Maybe time has healed me -- who knows? -- but I no longer feel the need to yell "pick me!" Sure, I respect certain boundaries, and will stay away from friends who were "his," no matter how strong the urge to call them and beg them to knock some sense into him on my behalf. And he has afforded the same wide berth to friends who are "mine." But the ones in the middle -- the ones who loved each of us individually and both of us together -- they shouldn't have to choose. After all, it's not about them. (It's about me -- like everything else!)

Yesterday, I offered my old friend a hug and an apology, and it felt really good. Soon, I'm going to call the fence guy, and it's going to feel really good knowing Leo and Manny are safely tucked away in my backyard. Some folks I'm just not willing to risk losing.