Bird Droppings February 7, 2012

Fencing a friend

 

As I got home last night a full moon was directly in front of me rising up over the highway. By the time I got to the house it was nearly directly east and hidden behind the pines peeking through. This morning as the moon was disappearing behind the pines it was framed by a patch or two of clouds making a lace frame around a beautiful moon. So I am in school for our last day before a holiday of nearly two weeks and a full moon so who knows what to expect. Each morning as I burn a bit of white sage and can sit and ponder I wonder beyond the walls of my room and realize there are many who seek and need help. Perhaps this lead me to my thinking today and who knows what direction it may go.

Several years back while stopping by to check on what my wife wanted for lunch, at her clinic office I ran into a parent of a former student. My student’s mother I had not seen since an IEP meeting nearly five years ago. He had graduated and could find work. It seems since he has been out of school he stopped taking his meds which hindered him in many ways. I am not a big proponent of meds for children. However in some situations they are warranted. He had serious issues and had been under medical supervision since he was a small child. His mother told me how he has been turned down for employment so many times he has stopped trying. As I drove away I could not help but think could we have in school done anything different. For some reason as I thought back on that day I began thinking of friends whom I had not seen in some time. I am using several quotes from an author I was introduced to nearly eleven years ago, Sydney J. Harris from an essay, Keeping Friendship in repair, published in his column, Strictly Personal.

 

 

“ONE THING WE LEARN, or should learn, as we grow older is to keep our friendships in repair; otherwise they deteriorate with time and weather, just like a neglected fence.” Sydney J. Harris

 

 Nearly eleven years ago Ray King a fellow teacher offered me an article to read by Sydney J. Harris. I was impressed and went a bit farther in my reading, looking up on the internet and finding a website that had many of his columns archived. Going through his columns, so many filled with common sense and wisdom I had found a new treasure of thought and for me pondering. Harris’s ideas and thoughts were back in the 1970’s and 80’s read in over 200 newspapers around the country during his life time. After reading Harris’s article I began to look as well at columnists in my own papers each day, what was I missing? So a word of advice, keep your eyes open, there may be right in front of you some good reading. As I looked at this note from SJH it reminded me of my farm days not all that long ago. We were forever pulling wire and setting fence posts to keep sheep and cattle in and predators out.

When you drive around our section of Georgia you can see many times where fence rows had been by cedar trees growing in lines. So often cedar and wild cherry trees and or wild plum trees, will follow a fence line, after many years of neglect all that is left is the trees. Many years back I went by a local saw mill to get some green pine boards, fresh cut for a job we were working on back at the farm. Lying on the ground was a large log, a black walnut tree trunk easily twenty four inches in diameter and twenty feet long. I was curious about it since most everything in the yard area was pine logs and boards. The sawmill operator told me he had found this tree during a timber cutting and it was one of the few he has ever found of that size without fence marks. That means no wires had ever been attached to and as the years go by grown into the tree. The wire and nails leave imperfections in the wood. As a result this log was priceless and he was going to use it for his own house and sell the rest for veneer.

Most city folk have never strung wire through trees. It is hard trying to put posts in and can be rough; it is so easy to tack to a tree.  

 

“One of my biggest regrets is a friendship I failed to keep in repair, some years ago, for the usual insufficient reasons – lack of time, too many other concerns, travel, and family affairs. Then, when I finally got around to it, my friend had died while I was out of town and I learned about it only later. This was a bitter experience, because he needed old friends in his last, struggling year, and I was not there to give even moral support. This remains an indelibly black mark against my character.”  Sydney J. Harris, Keeping Friendship in repair, Strictly Personal,

 

 

As I ponder this comparison between fence and friendship I do see similarities but I see differences as well. In order for a fence to be usable it needs to be in repair and working. But in comparison to friendship it is not a confining aspect to a relationship.  

 

“No one really understands friendship, any more than we understand a romantic affinity. It is more, and different, than a meeting of minds, a conjunction of interests, a similarity of backgrounds, though it may include all these things.”  Sydney J. Harris,

 

 

As I am thinking of fencing and friendship and how confining fencing could be and friendship is not or should not be yet that aspect of keeping in repair is so crucial and from a farming standpoint, I can see the comparison.  

 

“One of my dearest friends disagreed with me about almost everything in the world – the only thing we agreed upon was that we liked, enjoyed, and trusted each other. If you have this, you don’t need anything else; and if you don’t, nothing else matters.” Sydney J. Harris

 

This I sit here thinking back to days gone by and a conversation yesterday with a friend from way back and a long time ago. All of my life I have had few friends, yet I have had many. For some people have friends to confide in, talk with, for me it has always been different. As I look back on years gone by and relationships and fences, there have been times when trying to build a friendship was like fence building, confining and restricting. Then there have been times, it was more as Harris depicts, using a fence simply as an illustration of how friendship too can fall through disrepair, and sometimes even death.

Several weeks back I mentioned an illustration I was using in talking about feedback between teachers and students, it is also very applicable to friendship. For many relationships, it is parasitic each feeding off the other. Then we move to symbiotic relationships where each is their own, yet they need each other and finally to an osmotic relationship where the fence is now semi permeable and ideas and thoughts pass freely back and forth. We still have confines, by definition of friendship, but within the walls there are no confines, a difficult task one that takes effort and work and is harder to maintain than any farm fence, even when nailing to trees. Today check your fences, see if they need repairing work on your friendships. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart and to always give thanks.

namaste

bird