The featured photo of this post goes back to 2004 or 2005. You see, my memory falters after about 2003 or so. I can remember what happened in November of 1989 better than I can remember what happened in November of 2013. It’s a sad reality of the aging process (appended by my new bifocals.) Back in 2004 (or 2005) I crouched in the backyard as the sun went down, and waxed all contemplative.
A single strand of bamboo rises on the right side of the photo, while dried miscanthus, already devastated by the frosts and the winds of late fall, backs the middle and left. A wooden fence, bright and relatively new at the time, lends a bit of structure to the goings-on. It’s been about a decade since this was taken, and I’m not sure which has aged worse – myself or that fence – both are pretty worn. Yet still we stand, season after season, struggling with the rough days, basking in the good ones, and meeting in a mostly happy and fortunate middle.
Today I look out the window and study that wooden fence, as one might study the lines in their face, or the gray in their hair. The wood is lined with water stains, gray with age, and haggard with edges torn by the claws of scurrying squirrels, yet it’s a testament to the test of time. Eventually, it will fall – all things do – but another will rise in its stead. Good fences make good neighbors, someone once wrote, and we all could stand a couple of boundaries in our lives. The biggest one I’ve found is time, and no one ever surmounts it.
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