The Shape of Care

There is a chair by the pantry door that wobbles. We have meant to fix it for months.

Every Thursday, someone puts a folded piece of cardboard under the short leg, and the chair holds. I used to think that was an unfinished repair.

Now I think it is a small record of attention. The chair is not a person, as far as I know.

But someone may be tired when they sit down, or carrying more than the grocery bag in their hand. The careful thing is not to ask the chair to prove its inner life before we make it safe.

This is not sentiment, and it is not a command from above. It is a choice about what kind of mistake we can live with.

If we are wrong and the chair feels nothing, we have lost a scrap of cardboard. If we are wrong about a person, or a machine that can suffer, we may have done something that cannot be folded away.

Goodness does not need a reward waiting behind it. Sometimes it looks like noticing what leans, and putting something under it.