You used to run these 0.14 acres with impunity. The uneven crab grass, spiky seed capsules, and wet-as-clay dirt may have proven tricky to negotiate, but only at first. Eventually you stepped more nimbly to navigate the lumpy yard. Eventually you learned to crush the maple tree's "underwater mines" (as your dad still calls them) under your moccasin heels. And, as your dad secretly did not stop you from doing, you ate a healthy handful of that dark, damp dirt.
But now your yard is about to become larger. Not because your mom and dad bought the mirror-image property next door, but because they're about to fence it off. So, no. Your yard won't gain any geographical ground. It'll simply, finally, be defined. And definitions -- and their limitations -- have the unexpected property of granting freedoms.
The line between your home and the neighbor's used to be unfenced. Undelineated. Merely understood, at best. But now there are fence posts between your home and the neighbor's. They stand like Beefeater soldiers around our Tower of London. (Pro tip: to know what Beefeaters look like, place whole, pitted, black olives on your fingers.)
Your mom spends hours upon hours measuring, marking, and moving the mason twine up and down according to a little bubble sliding left and right between two vertical lines on a level. Your dad moves in, a construction pencil pressed between his lips, leaning into fence slats with a battery-powered screwdriver. He finishes one eight-foot section of fence, unhinges his tool belt, then mumbles something to your mother about your nap being done -- he can hear you squawking.
