The good news

Barbara Brookes

At a time when we are all isolated in our homes, teddy-bear-in- the-window hunts might keep exercising children amused in the street. Dunedin people are getting into the spirit. Our household currently lacks a teddy bear but we’ve put our wooden duck in the window as a tiny effort to relieve tedium. All round us people are engaging in acts of kindness: a wave from the window, a phone call or email to a distant friend, and then the essential workers – particularly those in the health system, providing treatment and care for on-going needs. In the face of relentless bad news, these acts keep us grounded and sane. And some people are truly inventive.

There’s the Londoner, Ursula Stone, who made bouquets out of discarded supermarket flowers and put them on doorsteps until stopped when greater restrictions were put on movement. Joe Wicks, a fitness instructor, has taken it upon himself to become the world’s children’s ‘PE with Joe’ instructor via YouTube. Eighteen-year-old Charlotte Bredael from Newcastle makes videos of herself dressed as a different Disney princesses to keep kids amused. There is an Australian ‘The Kindness Pandemic’ Facebook group. Two Wellington teenagers have set up a ‘Self Isolation Support – Kapiti’ Facebook site offering to deliver groceries and medicines. Devonport has a ‘Self Isolation Support’ group and Paradox books there is running a writing competition for those eight years and older ‘to zizz up’ isolation. In Dunedin, closed food businesses donated their high-quality products to Kiwi Harvest, the food charity which continues to deliver to food bank agencies. Others people have started ‘poem exchanges’ to send poems, rather than viruses, around the world. Here’s one I received from the author, Margaret Austin, from her collection Nothing Rhymes with Asparagus. I think about it daily on my dog walk.

What Trees Remind Me Of

Trunks crowd the path ahead
Roots erupt
Branches conceal
And leaves transform themselves
I consider this
Walking through foliage
Trees don’t think
Yet contemplate the sky
Trees don’t sleep
Yet give rest to birds
Trees don’t die
In a hurry
They remind me
To root myself deep
To hold stoutly to my ground
To be unafraid
To send forth my leaves
To spread protective branches

Over all who come my way
Trees
It doesn’t matter
That money doesn’t grow on them

While some overseas politicians rate the economy as more important than preventing deaths amongst the elderly, in Dunedin a group of care workers have left home for a month to move in with and care for their dementia patients. Recognising the vulnerability of their residents, who don’t understand the need for self-isolation, nine available staff members have isolated themselves from their own families to look after the elderly during the lockdown. This extraordinary act grows out of a loyalty to each other and the institution, as many of the workers have been there for fifteen years and regard each other as family. The cook has left her own family of three children to care for the residents. This devotion is a result of workers who value each other and their residents, and of an obvious commitment to a manager who values her employees. This is the good news that can remind us that the roots of kindness lie deep.

---

Barbara Brookes is co-editor of Corpus.