NIMBY is me

Sometimes it takes a couple of headlong runs at a column to get it going. A public figure might do something incredibly stupid or insincere or just plain wrong and away I go—to the keyboard. Once in a while, I just look at the comings and goings in our community and voila, the story unfolds. This week, I didn’t have to look too far—right outside my front door, a story unfolded. One of those stories I really wanted to “not see”. And, one of those stories I certainly didn’t want to see in my backyard. But the story isn’t about the neighbours. It’s about our community.

Many years ago when youngest COM, (Child of Mine) was about six years old, she came rushing in from our backyard to tell me she’d found “something” near the back fence. Her face just about said it all. It was something a bit scary. An exciting discovery. She couldn’t say whether it was “animal, vegetable or mineral” so out I went to see what I could see. It’s a big yard. I had time to think of what it might be, perhaps a dead squirrel, a robin’s egg, a wounded bird or a snake. You know, the usual “you should see what I found in the backyard” kinda stuff. Nope. It was a bong. GEEEEZ. A plastic pop bottle outfitted with a bit of plastic hose, some aluminum foil and duct tape. COM didn’t know what it was but was smart enough to leave it alone. It was a first encounter for me, too. A first encounter of the worst kind. By reason of deduction I had guessed, correctly, what it was. Let’s just say finding a bong in my backyard didn’t make me a happy mom. I, perhaps a bit too angrily, shooed COM into the house and scoured the rest of the yard for other junk devices. Just the “bong”. I was furious! My blood pressure cranked up to ears pounding. In my friggin’ backyard! The place where my kids played. Not as safe as I had figured and I steamed as I thought of the number of backyard camping adventures all of our kids and their friends had enjoyed out there. I remembered the hot summer nights, hearing them shrieking and giggling while playing hide and seek around the big shade trees. I had once seen my yard as a safe place to be a kid, to relax and to enjoy life. Someone else saw it much differently. I called the police. An officer came, spoke to my daughter and to me. She explained how our yard would seem like the ideal place for drug abusers, out of plain sight, a fair distance from the house and the street. All of things the LOML and I had found so very attractive about the property had, in an instant, become all of the reasons we shouldn’t have bought it.

So, at the tender age of six, our daughter was plopped on a kitchen chair and given the “drug talk”. The “where do babies come from talk” would prove to be so much easier. I don’t know if she understood how scared and angry we were for her and for her friends. We grilled her about who, if anyone, she’d seen back there. We didn’t want her to be afraid to be a child but we didn’t want her to get too comfortable— anymore. Crap, she’d only just lost her first tooth. She’s only just learned to tie her own shoelaces. She still liked stories before going to sleep at night. The officer told me she thought she might know where the paraphernalia came from. Freaking paraphernalia. Paraphernalia in my freaking backyard where my kids played. Understatement. It was an understatement to say I was angry that day. None of this was covered in my copy of Dr. Spock or Canadian Mother and Child!

Fast forward 20 years. What our neighbourhood watched through the folds of their curtains, this week, doesn’t make me angry or fearful for my children. It makes me sad because drug abuse and use, in this community’s backyard, is still a problem. With all of the information we have at our fingertips, we just never know what’s going on in our own backyard. My beautiful backyard has never been the same since the “bong” incident two decades ago. What we had hoped would be an isolated event proves not to be so, 20 years later. It still creeps me out to go back there, and rightly so. The trees are taller, the shade is deeper and darker. Our yard had once been a great spot for game of hide ‘n’ seek, for makeshift forts and, at dusk, being able to lie down on the grass to look up at the stars or watch the bats swoop out of the barn.

We shouldn’t be afraid to let our children enjoy our community backyard.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca