APAD: Mend fences

Meaning:

   Re-establish good relations with people one has disagreed with.

 

Background:

 

   `Good fences make good neighbours' is listed by Oxford Dictionary of

   Quotations as a mid 17th century proverb. Robert Frost gave it a boost in the

   American consciousness with his 1914 poem Mending Walls:

 

     ...

     He will not go behind his father's saying,

     And he likes having thought of it so well

     He says again, `Good fences make good neighbors.'

 

   That poem, and the 1870s coining of the term `mending fences' both appear to

   be influenced by the earlier proverb.

 

   In 1879, the American Senator John Sherman returned to his home in Mansfield,

   Ohio and made a speech, in which he said:

 

     "I have come home to look after my fences."

 

   ...

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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My childhood buddy Jianwei and I met for lunch during my visit to my hometown

last Sep. We hadn't seen each other for eight years but I spotted him right away

in traffic. A balding head and a swarthy deep-lined face made him look older

than his age but he was otherwise nimble and healthy. After the initial

jubilation, we sighed over the fleeting of time.

 

``How's your family? How's Jianguo?'' I remembered my friend's older brother,

Jianguo, fondly. Three grades above us, he used to protect us from bullies in

elementary school.

 

``You're getting senile," chuckled Jianwei. ``You forgot we stopped speaking

after our parents passed away.''

 

His parents sided with Jianguo, according to him, in splitting the family wealth

between the two brothers.

 

``I thought it was over. Surely you've mended the fences after so many years!''

 

``Let me ask you something,'' he muttered with a hint of challenge in his voice.

``What's the point of holding a grudge if you don't hold it forever?''

 

I still don't have an answer to that question.