How did the chicken cross the road? While driving down a highway, I saw a mother hen expertly clucking her way across the road with her brood of chicken under her wings. It takes me a while to cross a road. She did it with such care and such confidence!
Monkeys seem such careless eaters. Yet, when they eat and scatter a half-eaten fruit, perhaps another tree grows. When a tree falls, it is the monkey that mourns. Like Richard Ford says, “It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?” It is difficult to fathom what the forest thinks? I know this: If the forest were to choose between me and the monkey, it would choose the monkey.
A tendril lies forlorn on the ground. You plant a stick by its side. The sapling wraps itself around the support and grows strong and sturdy. The stick provides no water, no sunshine, no manure but just stands there till the tender shoot gathers its own momentum and place in the world. Caring sometimes is about just being there—even if the rest of the world thinks that you are nothing but a piece of dead wood.
In his poem ‘Vultures’, Chinua Achebe speaks about a vulture perched high on the broken bone of a dead tree and nestling lovingly with his mate. Should one marvel at finding love and care in such an unlikely place—a corner in the charnel house? He further speaks of a Commandant at Belsen Camp, who while heading home with the smell of burnt human flesh still clinging to his nostrils, stops by the wayside sweet shop to pick up a chocolate for his tender offspring waiting for his Daddy. Achebe asks a poignant question at the end of the poem: Should we feel gratified that even in such a cruel world, there is this small spark of kindness and care; or should we despair that he who is so caring can also be very cruel? …
Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in every germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.1
Seeing clothes drying on a line stirs something deep within. It is a great reminder that somebody has cared enough to wash away the weariness of the day. The fragrance and freshness of newly washed clothes always makes you ready to tackle another tough day!
Woven into the tapestry of life are these small nuggets of care which make the world a beautiful place. A Welsh poet WH Davies wrote:
A poor life this if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare…2
I would say:
Please take your time to stand and stare
It is a place so full of care.
1 ‘Vultures’, Chinua Achebe, Beware Soul Brother, and Other Poems, Heinemann, 1972.
2 ‘Leisure’, WH Davies, Songs of Joy and Others, AC Fifield, 1911.