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- Chris Fabry
- Married to Andrea since 1982. We have 9 children together and none apart. Our dog's name is Tebow.
Friday, June 5, 2009
I’ve been thinking about fences lately. It’s one of the things I miss about our house in Colorado. Here’s a picture taken by our neighbor, Brandi, who is quite a photographer for her young age. I asked her to take a few shots of the fence that kept Pippen and Frodo in. Most of the time it did, except when somebody left the gate open.
The kids always had a problem with it, which was why Pippen and Frodo would get out. You had to slide a pin over from the gate to get it to latch, but in order to do that, you had to lift the gate up with your toe so the pin would slide correctly. I worked on it for weeks and thought I had it fixed, then it would break. I finally put a new hinge on it, securing it with huge, black screws. It worked, and from the angle this picture is taken, it looks like it's still there, though still leaning downhill.
There are memories that run the length of fences. Overgrown echoes of the past that sprout like weeds around our lives. Some are split rail memories we can easily see through. Some are made of bricks and can't be penetrated. Some memories are built to keep things in. Others try to keep things out.
This gate was nearly my undoing. When the contractor came over to move the fence about six inches (I am not kidding) because we were into the easement on our neighbor’s yard, he left me with these words about the gate. “That’ll be a good little weekend project for you.”
“Yeah,” I said. I just stared at that stupid gate. He said I should reinforce it with some doohickey and then mix some concrete and blah blah blah—I was like the dog in that Far Side comic who hears his name when his owner talks but every other word is gibberish. I had no idea how to fix that crooked, hanging gate.
The kids always had a problem with it, which was why Pippen and Frodo would get out. You had to slide a pin over from the gate to get it to latch, but in order to do that, you had to lift the gate up with your toe so the pin would slide correctly. I worked on it for weeks and thought I had it fixed, then it would break. I finally put a new hinge on it, securing it with huge, black screws. It worked, and from the angle this picture is taken, it looks like it's still there, though still leaning downhill.
There are memories that run the length of fences. Overgrown echoes of the past that sprout like weeds around our lives. Some are split rail memories we can easily see through. Some are made of bricks and can't be penetrated. Some memories are built to keep things in. Others try to keep things out. I used to stand by our fence and talk with neighbors, just sharing life with a certain ease. No hurry. Kind of like what we try to do with the radio program.
I had no idea what was coming toward us as I stood by the fence of my life. I couldn't see that far. Sometimes fences make good vantage points. Sometimes they block the view.
The last time I was in the back yard, Ebony, our neighbor's big, black dog barked. There was a plaintive nature to her voice, as if she knew something had happened. Dogs have an instinct about such things, I think. Maybe fences do, too.
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