Tiny Triumphs
Cares Don’t Wash Away
Devonport / Auckland / Queensland / New Zealand
It’s a perfect southern summer day, as perfect any one day can be. Perfect for anyone who is themselves capable of having a good day. The whole world looks happy, healthy, centered and sensible; and I feel the same.
The town of Devonport is ten minutes away by ferry and offers micro-volcanoes seemingly made for easy summer walking. Long ago they were used as defensive outposts. Now they have been repurposed for Saturday morning kids who need to run uphill, and whose parents need them to too. They get to the top and watch their fathers in prime father form, pointing at all the places kids need to know about, and that even more, dads need to point at.
Devonport’s peaceful idyllic-ness is in no way contrived. It is a healthy and happy place, not just today but always. Seaside victorian houses in two, maybe three shades of white stuck to hillsides down to the water. Teens play cricket in otherwise empty parks, with warm summer winds rustling through tall perimeter trees. Kiwi kids wearing kiwi-bird hats laugh with their mums. Summer dogs smile without qualification. The whole world looks the way you think it always should.
You’d say everyone was perfectly happy if you didn’t know better; but everyone does. No one is wholly whole and everyone knows that much. No one is fully happy and secure. Today may be a day to wash your cares away, but I wonder if that is a thing that is even possible? Cares are persistent things, and not everyone I know is happy and secure.
Training wheel kids marvel at glistening fountains in the park. Training wheel parents right behind them, riding in the wake of their children’s unbridled joy. They are succeeding at early parenting only by being happier for them than themselves. Full of hope, some of it realistic. New to the job and wanting to do it right; for now by buying cute helmets. For now still unaware of future falls they are in training for, or if they will have any power to protect against them. But from now forward, they will always care. Those cares don’t wash away.
They can’t yet imagine specifically which, but they will always care more about those than anything else. Anyone who is free of cares, is so only temporarily. Anyone who is free of cares has a gift to offer and a window to do it in.
I climb my little volcanos and walk toward my chosen pub. At the only busy street crossing in town I help an old lady cross the street. She has a cane and wants to cross mid block. Maybe she doesn’t need help, but it wouldn’t hurt either. She tells me this isn’t a sensible place to cross the street, I tell her she can cross wherever she’d like, and joke that I’m using her for cover to cross there too, just as a distraction to the helping part. She asks about my funny accent and we walk alongside each other for a bit until we part ways at my chosen pub, Tiny Triumphs.
They had me with the name. It’s a neighborhood pub, with a makeshift record shop on the side deck, on summer Saturdays only. Neighbors on the deck in the sun. The playlist reveals the proprietor’s musical sensibilities, and helps work me toward focusing my swimming thoughts about washing cares away. It’s a carefully curated playlist of deep cuts and local artists. I settle in and talk music with a friend of the owner, while my cares about the not-wholly-whole keep paddling about in the back half of my brain. It’s trying to engineer a way to transfer happiness and security.
Local Auckland band The Beth’s come up singing “The Straight Line Was a Lie.” It’s a simple pop song about the supposed straight path out of pain. It is never that. The song is not too deep, just simple and true. The patrons on the deck are secure, the alt-pop band is struggling. I am secure, but not everyone I know is. Happiness transfer prototypes are failing. It’s looking even less likely than washing your cares away. The path to happy and secure is only ever your own, and it is anything but straight. Walking alongside is my only idea today.
By all accounts it is a perfect day. I’m not trying to wash my cares away, I’m trying to move them forward. No one is free of cares, but I currently have some bandwidth outside of my own cares, and that is a gift when true. It is easier to carry someone else’s than your own, but it can’t be done without adding the weight of hope. Hope for their better, hope for their own sense of happy and secure, hope for some triumphs. Tiny will do.
Brad: So much great stuff here...l lingered on "It is easier to carry someone else’s than your own, but it can’t be done without adding the weight of hope." Terrific.
“Walking alongside is my only idea today.” I appreciate this small ephiphany and will carry it through my week. Thanks Brad for persisting through the swimming thoughts to writing it out for us to read.