Brown bird

Imagine, if you will, a little brown bird. This little brown bird peeps and cheeps and hops about. It is one of the many little birds that hop and flutter from the low branches of a cedar bush to the winter snow below by the bus stop in winter. Surrounded by friends, it flutters and flies, lands on the snow on tiny feet, pecks at the ground, maybe a berry, maybe a grain, then dashes off, chased by another bird, a gust of wind, or the arrival of the bus. Its heart beats quickly quickly under its mantle of weightless feathers. It is fragility and self-contained strength in the same breath.

This bird is oblivious to the city heaving and creaking around it. Its world is the cedar bush, the larger bushes nearby, maybe the leafless maple, maybe the eaves of the crumbling apartment block. It is a city bird but in its element because it is free.

Now, imagine a pet shop in the basement of a shopping mall. Any shopping mall, anywhere. At the entrance there are shiny goldfish bowls and starter aquarium sets on sale. In the window, there are sleepy kittens and confused puppies. If you were to enter the store, to squeeze past the still snake and hunched rabbits, past the bird seed and aquarium trinkets, you would come to a small cage with a small brown bird. That little brown bird breaks my heart.

And that is how I am feeling about daycare.