Boundaries & Walls
by Julie Russell

workshop 
announcement

in issue five
Scintillations
My Final Phone Call
Master Of My Fate
Almost Famous Photographers
Bugs
Cubicle Hell
Breaking Out Of My Cocoon
Letters To My Younger Self 
Boundaries & Walls
Surviving Today
Adventures In Chalking
Books That Changed My Life
Declare What You Are
My Most Brave Moment
Masks of Bravery  
Love And God
Moody Girl

poetry
Vocalizing
Bravery
The Imaginary "You"

afterthoughts
comments from our readers

contributors

take me back
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future issues
Issue Six: Friendship
Issue Seven: Trust

previous issues
Issue One: Change
Issue Two: Balance
Issue Three: Spring
Issue Four: Goddess

There's a poem by Robert Frost called "The Mending Wall."  It's a poem about boundaries, walls, and the restrictions we have to letting people into our lives and our spaces.  My sophomore year of college I was instructed to write a 3-page, double-spaced essay about this poem.  I managed to crank out two pages on autopilot before my writing engine died.  Kaput.  No more to say about a Mending Wall.  If I had understood a fraction of what I do now, ten years later, about fences and neighbors as a metaphor for walls and boundaries, I could have cranked out TEN pages, easily.  I didn't get it then.  But now?  Oh yeah, I get it NOW!

About a year ago, my next-door neighbors tore a three-foot hole in the middle of our backyard fence while removing an old tree stump that I'd never noticed.  They didn't tell us what they were going to do in advance, although later they claimed they came by two seconds before creating the hole and we weren't home.  All we knew then was that one night we discovered a giant window into their barren yard from our landscaped paradise.

We really liked these neighbors.  I'd brought them cupcakes and cookies before and they'd invited us to come to their church a couple of times.  We just didn't understand the hole.  We assumed they intended to patch it. Knowing the hole was there annoyed us, but with all the bushes on our side I couldn’t see it.  We had other things going on and our marriage wasn’t doing well, so we weren’t thinking too much about the fence.

A month or so later a whole different section of the fence disappeared.  Once again this happened with no notice.  Days later I recall the husband on their side told my husband the whole fence needed replacing.  It does?  It looked like a good enough fence from our side, sans the missing parts.  They're nice people, we thought, they must intend to fix it at their expense because they never mentioned this previously. 

Six months passed.  A letter from them was mixed in among the junk mail and bills in our mailbox.  The letter demanded half the money — $900! — to replace the fence.  I didn't do anything about it, and neither did my husband.  We didn’t want to communicate with them.  Why should we pay to replace a fence that we didn't have any problems with?  Their letter mentioned something about a "Good Neighbor Law" which thoroughly riled us up.  "Wouldn't good neighbors talk to us before demanding money?" we fumed.

A month later, another letter arrived accompanied by a quote from the fence company.  This letter also demanded we give them half the money to repair the fence. Again we ignored it, hoping it would just go away.  We were preoccupied with our future lives and possible move, and just didn't want to think about replacing a fence that looked just fine from our side.

Shortly after the “Sold” sign appeared in our yard, the wife appeared at our doorstep, demanding the matter be settled.  We offered up $400 - what we felt willing to pay. I also said that an apology would make all the difference in the world.  She softened.  Apologized.  I softened.  "Give us a minute to talk about this," I said to her.  My husband, though, was angry.  How could I change what we'd agreed upon without talking to him first?  I thought I was talking to him first right then.  I gave in to him and when she returned, told her that $400 was all we were willing to do. 

Our house sold.  Our neighbors called our realtor and demanded resolution on the fence.  He called us.  Anger stomped all around the conversation.  We told our realtor we would handle it. 

I turned to my intuitive counselor for advice.  She said the law was on my side and I had the power in this situation.  She challenged me to resolve this with love and to teach them about their own power.  I would have rather walked naked through Nordstrom!  Love them instead of act on the anger I was feeling?  She did add that it might be easier to pay the money instead of tangle the law up into it.  But, I was determined not to pay.  I was right.

The day we closed on the house, I handled the fence issue with a letter that I stuffed into their mailbox.  My letter said that according to the city regulations, we were not responsible to pay for half of the fence and did not intend to.  They had damaged the fence, so they needed to fix the fence.  I hoped this was the end, but feared it wasn't.

Four days passed.  We were completely moved out, and onto our new lives.  As much as I wanted it to be resolved, I could feel it wasn't yet. A call from my husband mid-day:  our ex-neighbors had sent a letter to the sellers, their realtor, our realtor, and us rejecting our letter.  My blood began to boil.  I tried to stay calm but visions of lawsuits danced in my head.  My anger disrupted everything at work.  I had to leave the room.  I sat outside, breathing deeply to help my anger dissipate.  How I was supposed to love them when all I really wanted was to connect my foot with my neighbor's groin via a well-intended sidekick to show them who had the power?

I had to be done with this.  I left work and drove to my old neighborhood.  As I drove I was asking for help, from God, from the Universe, and anyone else who cared to support me.  I thought of transforming fear into love.  My brain began to chant: Fear into love.  Fear into love.  I had no idea how to do this, just that I needed to resolve it now, and I still wanted to kick someone.

My heart was thumping in my throat as I pounded on their door.  "Come outside," I growled at the husband, "tell me about this letter."  He started gently, to his credit, talking and explaining his side of the story.  The issue with the stump: he didn't intend to put a hole in the fence, he tried to talk to us beforehand but we weren't home.  He apologized profusely.  His sincerity began to rain onto the flames of my anger.  "But the fence wasn't old," I objected.

"No, no, let me show you."  We walked into his backyard.  He was right!  I could see clearly from his side what I couldn't see from mine.  The fence was the original 53-year-old fence and was being held up by a miracle and a prayer.  If I was wrong about that... I thought, and softened more.

I could finally see both sides of the story from both sides of the fence.  I did want to end this with love.  The more I softened, the more he did.  He was agreeing, yes, he did damage the fence, and was willing to pay a bit more because of that.  The amount $700 appeared in my thoughts.  "How about $700?"  I asked.  His response was immediate:  "Yes."  Then we were both apologizing as we walked out to my car for me to write a check.  We said goodbye, sending each other off with luck.

I thought of Frost’s poem after this happened and of the differences between boundaries and walls.  Walls keep people from getting close to each other; they block intimacy; they close you away from pain and love.  But boundaries are different.  They give space for people to get inside and love you, but don't give them the space to take advantage of you. 

For the last year of this fence business, I had thought my neighbors were trying to take something from me that I didn't want to give.  I now see that with all my relationship difficulties, I didn’t want them to get close to me.  I didn’t want to talk to them for fear I would damage the façade I’d created around my deteriorating marriage.

They didn't want to trample our boundaries, they just wanted past our walls and into our lives.  They wanted to become more than just neighbors - they wanted to become friends.  The holes in the fence gave us an opportunity to communicate - to collaborate - to work together to make something happen for a mutual exchange of love.  Funny thing is – I would have liked that too, if I hadn’t been so busy hiding behind my walls.

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