Looking Deeper - Part II

This post will make a heckuva lot more sense if you read Part I first. Well, maybe.

Part II - Drunken Mr. MacGregor and the Wild Aussie

Bear was given to Jordan for her fifth birthday. All of the children were young (7, 5, 3, and 6 months), but we felt a dog would be good for them. A puppy was all Jo wanted, and so we bought her the runt of a litter of Australian shepherds from a farm near Whitewater. She couldn't have been happier with her gift and new best friend.

Not having a fenced yard, Bear was mostly a house dog with the kids taking him for frequent walks on the leash or us supervising off-leash games of catch in the yard. Since the kids were so young, by the time Bear was almost two years old he was easily able to push past them as they opened the door to go outside. In true Aussie fashion, he would take full advantage of this sudden liberty by running at a frenzied pace up and down the line of chain link separating the backyards of the houses on our street with those of the houses on the next street. None of the houses on our street had fences, giving him a block long course to run. There was no catching him until he'd made at least a few passes, so we usually concentrated our efforts on clapping, calling, and finding things to entice him back toward the house.

Since the whole block was occupied by family or people renting from Danny's grandparents, no one much cared, until a new renter moved into the house on the corner. Unlike most of the other renters, this man had an urge to plant things and work in his yard. He set up a rectangular vegetable patch outside his back door (his house faced the intersecting street) and extended it to just shy of the fence line that Bear liked to run. Caleb and Jordan began to report overhearing our neighbor cursing and chasing the rabbits that would invade his garden as they rode up and down the street on their bikes, and he became known around our house as Mr. MacGregor after the Beatrix Potter character.

Not long after the garden was planted, Bear made one of his famous escapes. He was caught without having run over the neighbor's garden, but Mr. MacGregor was furious even if there was no damage. The kids were lectured about being extra careful when stepping outside, but it wasn't long before Bear slipped away to freedom again. This time he trampled two tomato plants. Of course, Mr. MacGregor was livid, and he did have some right to be. We offered to buy more tomato plants and tried to insist when he refused, but his tone made it clear that any effort to replace the plants or pay for the damage would not be welcomed. Mr. MacGregor preferred to continue nursing this feeling of righteous indignation and rage over two freaking tomato plants.

Mr. MacGregor continued to chase rabbits, mutter about the kids riding past on their bikes, and scowl at us each chance he got. We tried to train Bear and be sure he got plenty of play time and exercise on the leash to counteract the high energy level inherent in his breeding. We eventually put chain link around the backyard, and, sadly, we built a less visible fence between ourselves and our neighbor. He cast looks of disgust in our direction, and in return we giggled over his penchant for gold chains with an open shirt and tanning in his backyard in a Speedo. He grumbled at the kids riding by on their bikes, and we whispered about his daily trips in his Cadillac to and from a nearby bar. He often drove home from the bar during daylight hours, swerving a little. The kids were warned to come in the house if they saw Mr. MacGregor turning the corner.

All of Mr. MacGregor's pent up rage came spilling out one evening as we sat having dinner next door in my in laws' backyard. I think this was after the fence had been put up (as I seem to remember him leaning over it in the following exchange), but that's of little importance. One of the kids ran back in the house for something and accidentally let Bear out of either the house or the fenced yard. Bear made his usual run, but came back after one pass, probably because we had food.

Mr. MacGregor, recently home from the bar and smelling heavily of liquor came storming down through the neighboring yards, shouting all the way. He angrily cussed our entire family and threatened, in front of the children, to shoot "that damned dog" the next time he saw him out. The kids were frightened, Jo was sobbing, and the adults were shocked and angry. Danny tried to handle the situation calmly by apologizing but also telling him there was no need to cuss and threaten the dog in front of the kids. Mr. MacGregor responded by saying that he was a "G--damned Vietnam veteran", he could cuss whenever he liked, and he would come over and kick Danny's ass right then to prove it.

Well then. I do have a lot of respect for veterans and am very grateful for their service, but it pissed me off that this man had just used that as an excuse to frighten my kids and threaten their dog. I was fairly shaking with rage of my own at that point and about to go kick his old man, Vietnam veteran butt myself. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I have a pretty bad temper, and I have kicked a lot of ass in my time--at least in my own mind. (Oh, trust me, I gave him a good mental thrashing!) Danny wisely held me back and told Mr. MacGregor what was what and to come talk with us when he wasn't about to fall down drunk.

After that, we pretty much avoided one another. That is, until I had a garage sale a few months later. Mr. MacGregor and his girlfriend came down the street and quietly browsed through our sale. She bought some sort of little household doodad and he lingered behind to apologize for that day he had yelled at us. He said his girlfriend had been battling breast cancer and was really sick during that time and the stress had been wearing on him, but that it was no excuse. I think I just stood there with my jaw hanging open for a few minutes before mumbling an acknowledgement and expressing my remorse for not having been a better neighbor.

We didn't hear much from him after that. Mr. MacGregor died about a year later. We sent a peace lily to the funeral home, too little and too late. Sometimes I think about the energy I put into hating him for being such a cranky, drunken bastard, and I wonder what would have happened if I had used that energy instead to look deeper. If I hadn't been so full of my own "righteous" indignation, maybe I would have seen there was some reason behind his actions, some inner struggle or deeper pain that I could help to alleviate. Instead I built a fence around my yard and around my heart.

When people are unkind or even just a little prickly, it seems it's in our nature to fence ourselves off from the sting of rejection, to build walls to keep them from hurting us. What if we reconditioned ourselves to look deeper, to listen more closely, to respond with kindness?