I had the fence between my yard and the side street replaced in April, a plain wood fence to match the old one, and I assumed this would be an unremarkable event that no one but the contractor and I would think twice about. I was wrong. Wanda had opinions before the first post was even set in the ground.
She came out to her own front step, arms crossed, and watched the crew for a good twenty minutes the first morning, then made her way over to tell me the posts looked too close together, that fences these days are built cheap and won’t survive a real winter, and that the color I’d chosen for the stain looked, in her words, like wet cardboard.
She Is Not Wrong About Everything
Here’s the thing about Wanda that took me years to fully understand. She says these things bluntly, sometimes bluntly enough to sting a little, and she is also frequently correct. The posts were, in fact, spaced a bit closer than the old fence, though the contractor assured me it was up to current code and would hold up fine. The stain did look a shade darker wet than it did on the little sample chip, though it dried lighter, closer to what I’d actually picked.
I’ve learned not to dismiss her criticism just because it comes across sharp. She lived in this neighborhood for over fifty years before I moved in, has watched several fences go up and come down on this same stretch of street, and has apparently formed strong views on fence construction that she has never once been shy about sharing.
What She Actually Said, Verbatim
At one point, standing at the property line with her hands on her hips, she told me the old fence had character and this one looked like something you’d see at a rental property. I asked her, a little defensively I’ll admit, what exactly gave a fence character, and she said age, and the fact that a woodpecker had lived in one of the old posts for two summers in the nineties. I did not know that. Nineteen years in this house and I did not know a woodpecker had lived in my old fence before I ever bought the place.
She Also Softened, Eventually
By the third day, once the crew had finished and the whole thing was standing there fresh and pale, she came by again, this time without crossed arms, and admitted that it looked tidy. Tidy was the word she used, not nice, not pretty, tidy, which from Wanda is close enough to a compliment that I took it as one.
She still maintains the color is wrong. She brings it up periodically, usually apropos of nothing, standing at her mailbox and calling over that the fence looks like wet cardboard again today, particularly on overcast mornings when I suppose the light does something unflattering to the stain. I’ve stopped arguing the point. It’s easier, and honestly a little funny at this point, like a bit we’ve developed without either of us deciding to develop it.
Why I Don’t Mind
I could take this personally. Some days, if I’m being honest, a small part of me does, especially on a morning when I’m tired and not in the mood for an unsolicited review of my landscaping choices. But mostly I’ve come to see it as just how Wanda shows up in the world. She has never once pretended to like something she doesn’t, not the fence, not my choice of paint for the mailbox two summers ago, not the flowering shrub I planted that she insists attracts wasps.
There’s something almost restful about a neighbor who won’t perform enthusiasm she doesn’t feel. I know that when Wanda does say something is good, she means it, because she has proven, repeatedly and at length, that she is willing to say when something isn’t.
The Fence, Six Months In
The fence is holding up fine so far. No wobble in the posts despite Wanda’s predictions, though I’ll admit I check them after any strong wind, half expecting her to be right eventually. The stain has weathered to something closer to a warm brown, no longer wet cardboard by anyone’s estimation, though I have a feeling if I pointed that out to her she’d simply move on to critiquing something else. Knowing Wanda, she probably already has a list.
The Woodpecker Story, Revisited
I asked her again about the woodpecker, curious whether the story would hold up to a second telling the way some of her stories do and don’t. This time she said it lived in the post nearest her own yard, not mine, for two summers running, and that it used to wake her before her alarm most mornings that first year, tapping away well before sunrise. It’s a slightly different version from the first telling, where I recall her placing it closer to my side of the fence. I didn’t point out the discrepancy. I’ve decided some stories are more true in spirit than in exact detail, and a woodpecker that lived somewhere along that fence line for two summers in the nineties is close enough to a fact that I’m willing to accept it without an audit.
What I do believe, regardless of which post the bird favored, is that she genuinely misses the old fence more than she’s willing to say outright. Criticism, with Wanda, is often just another way of holding onto something she isn’t ready to let go of yet.