What’s behind your backyard fence?

I like to think of writing as a search for things that have been lost, hidden, misplaced, ignored, forgotten, buried, or stashed behind the backyard fence. See there? As soon as I wrote “backyard fence,” I saw an image of the dog-eared fence behind the pink stucco house where I lived as a little girl. I didn’t mean to write about the backyard fence; that’s just what got uncovered in the act of writing this post. 

Every time something new is uncovered, it brings the thing beneath it closer to the surface 

Now I remember how the twins and I got into a rock-throwing fight with a bunch of kids who lived on the other side of that fence. How, when we looked around for ammunition to return their fire, our eyes landed on the perfect, most plentiful thing: hard, green tomatoes my mother had labored to grow in her summer garden. 

Now I remember how my mother cried when she found her bushes bare; how instead of punishing us, she wept in a broken-hearted way that changed something in my young consciousness. That was the moment I learned about respect for living, growing things; where I saw my mother for the first time as a feeling human being; and where I first made the connection between my actions and the resulting deep pain in another person.

What’s behind YOUR backyard fence?

Maybe it’s a long-forgotten story. A new awareness about how you became “you.” Or a commitment to something important that’s gotten lost in the busy-ness of your day-to-day life. 

I’d love to hear from you.