By Jeff Carter

A few years back, a mom and her three children moved into the house next door. The youngest, a little girl who in a few months would be attending pre-kindergarten classes, embraced the idea of having become our neighbour from the start. We had introduced ourselves, Marie and I, soon after they had arrived. 
For the girl, a diminutive creature topped with blonde curls and possessing seemingly boundless energy, Marie was simply Marie but I was ‘Neighbour.’ 
‘M’ would watch for our departure or arrival that summer, rushing over, shouting, “Neighbour! Neighbour!” and grasp me about the legs, her older sister eventually arriving to pry her away, much to my relief. A handful of strawberries or raspberries, passed over the back fence were her delight and when the fruit was gone, she would settle for flowers, dandelions even, placing them in a little vase and, upon taking our advice, adding a bit of water. 
Marie had M over for tea a couple times, served in wee cups, with a cookie on the side. Never did we let her out of our sight, fearing a fall from the elevated playhouse on our property or some other mishap. 
Our days living next to our new neighbours turned into weeks and then months. Finding it difficult to make ends meet, the mom decided yet another move was in order and found another home to purchase a couple thousand miles away. 
We had the family over on our back porch for the first time the evening before they left. 
In thinking of M, I am reminded of my boyhood friends in Oxford County. 
The boys from the farm on the hill worked hard and played hard, as did their cousins, all descendants of folks who managed to escape the poverty of the old world to better themselves. 
I think of them often. The elder was known as ‘Moose’ in the neighbourhood and his brother, little more than a year the younger, was Rocky. You may well remember the cartoon that inspired the names. 
Back then, small square bales composed of hay or straw were commonplace. We would build forts in our mow, the boys and I, and being of a calculating nature, I would create my own and dare the boys to find me. 
They never did. 
The trick was to create one hidden location and then, digging deeper, yet another below it, using a few boards for support, where one could lie undetected. It is a wonder no one suffocated. 
Rocky, a solid little square of a boy, fell one day, an incident I remember well having watched his descent. He was attempting to navigate the second beam in our barn, a tricky maneuver for a young fellow, and lost his grip. Down he went, first bouncing off the top of the henhouse, then off the hay chute and finally landing on the planks below. Had he rolled then in the wrong direction at that point, he may well have made it all the way down to the mangers below. 
No bones broken, but perhaps a bit shaken. 
Rocky and Moose and their cousins seemed fearless to me, or perhaps a bit reckless. They told me of the incident at the bottomless pool along the creek. Rocky somehow found himself in the dead of winter all but submerged, clinging to roots at its edge. Moose hadn’t the strength to lift him out and so he called their mom, who charged down the hill to the rescue. 
She was a sensible woman, so no punishment was meted out, only hot chocolate, a warm quilt next to the stove in the kitchen and a prayer of thanksgiving. 
Being a bit of a know-it-all, the boys from the hill would tell me of adventures in which I had not participated, hoping to stir a little jealousy in my being. One involved a game they had named Airplane! They played it with their cousins who, if anything, were a bit rougher around the edges than themselves. 
It took place in the upper level of their barn, starting above the second beam. Down below was pile of hay – “hardly any hay at all,” according to Moose. 
One bale represented the fuselage of the plane and a second, laid across lengthwise, the wings. Then the pilot, co-pilot and passengers would all climb aboard and the plane would take flight, or so they imagined. No smooth landing. Only a tangle of limbs and laughter. 
Thinking upon the escapade, perhaps it was the weight of the bales that helped absorb the shock. 
M would no doubt have relished such fun. On the evening of her family’s departure, she was nearly frantic with excitement, rushing in and out of our house from back porch as we chatted with her mom and elder sister and the mom’s boyfriend who was to be left behind. At one point, I slid the screen door shut and the girl, unaware, ran full force into it, flying back 10 feet. 
She lay there, dazed for a moment and, determined not to cry, swallowed her tears. 
I laughed, inappropriately perhaps, but laughed I did, long and hard. The next morning, when the large moving truck was fully loaded and the family van in tow at the rear, I watched for their departure. 
M and I exchanged a long glance, something akin to anger in her eyes, sadness in mine and then, they left. 
Children are resilient, which is a blessing these days, though scars can still accumulate, and some hurts ever go away.  ◊