Neighbours

One of the originals on this new street,
we've been near neighbours for two
decades. That's enough time in the
life of a family to witness toddlers with
trusting smiles grow into young adults.
It represents time enough, too, for plans
to go awry and personalities to become
enmeshed in a skein of offence and
defense, blame and contrition, demands
met by non-negotiable defiance.

A time when acquaintances, neighbours
are shocked and regretful to hear what
family mourns, the dissolution of a
marriage vow "to love and respect", when
both those living imperatives present in
short supply and patience and forbearing,
conciliation and concessions slam against
the raw new reality of mutual disdain.

The children learned they must accept an
interrupted family unit, no longer stable and
comfortably supportive. Resigned to a half-
life shared between two places, divided
loyalties, they feared, fretted and carried
on from one growth spurt of insecurity to
another, adjusting expectations along the way.

People move on to other assumptions,
that life will improve with promising new
relations which urgently require a change
in venue, away from the curse laid on the
original homestead. So, now, a new young
family with two young children is prepared
to inhabit what you have abandoned.

Knowing nothing of the sad ghosts of
family dis-united dwelt there, they
anxiously anticipate their future there,
and no one, certainly not I, will ever inform
them of the malign divisive spirit that once
haunted the original dwellers then
transformed them into strangers. One can
only trust it no longer, surely, dwells within.