The Crow And The Broken Fence
I’ve been watching the same crow out back for years. It still lands on the broken fence post first.
Much like all of us.
People don’t really change. They just get better at hiding the dent. Or maybe we just get tired of trying.
We all return to what broke us.
That fence post has been split since the old winters before Covid days when a car reversed too hard and took out the holding line. It’s an unstable perch. It wobbles every time the wind catches it, and it sags five inches lower than the rest of the rail.
But every single morning, before that bird goes for the compost pile or the gravel driveway, it drops its weight right on the splintered cedar.
We do that with our minds, too. We find the sharpest edge in our history and we set up camp right on top of it. There is a strange, quiet comfort in knowing exactly where the floor drops out.
A smooth road lets your mind drift until you forget where you are, but a broken fence keeps you awake.
Human beings are hardwired to prefer a familiar misery over an unfamiliar peace. Well, maybe not everyone, but I know I spent many years staying in a job that felt like a wet wool coat just because I knew the exact timing of the traffic lights.
We like the predictable grief. We can measure it. We can brace for it.
The dent becomes the handle. Once something is broken, that is where your fingers naturally go to pick it up.
Let me think on that a second.
Maybe I’m giving the bird too much credit. I might just be romanticizing a creature that’s looking for grubs in the rotten wood. But there is still a rhythm to it.
Every morning, right around dawn. The creak of the wood. It is a relationship between the weight of the bird and the weakness of the timber. They have found a way to agree with each other. If I went out there today with some heavy-duty screws and a fresh piece of pressure-treated plank, the crow would probably fly right past.
It wouldn’t recognize the place if it was whole.
Total transformation is a lie we tell people who want to buy new furniture. My kitchen top still has the crack from when I scraped the microven three years ago. I just put the water jug over it.
You don’t erase the line. You just live around it.
We have this idea that progress is a straight highway out of the woods. It isn’t. It is more like a deer trail that circles the same mountain. You pass the same old lightning-struck tree every few kilometers. You just happen to be a little more tired, or a little more quiet, each time you see it.
Time doesn’t fix the break, it just wears down the splinters until they stop drawing blood.
We only know who we are by the shape of what we’ve lost.
At least, when I look in the mirror, the first thing I notice is where the chair edge left a permanent mark. And the white beards that showed up the week my mother passed.
The smooth parts don’t tell much of a story.
The fence stays as is. I don’t have the ambition to fix it. The crow doesn’t seem to mind as well.
We just sit out there in the grey light, both of us learning how to lean into the broken parts.