the fawn returns
Two days ago I was really bummed out after seeing a fawn dead by the side of the road. I thought it was the little fawn that we had seen over the past couple months from time to time near the pond and in the forest next to my house.
But there's good news. Marco went for a walk, saw it too, and also thought it was our little neighbor fawn. But just as we were sitting talking about it with teary eyes, a deer walks up into the clearing next to the house.....and also her baby fawn!! So either he was miraculously ressurected or there was just more than one fawn around.
So it turns out that although a fawn was killed by a car, it wasn't the one that we "knew". Funny, isn't it, how we personalize something like that, call it "our fawn" and feel proud of it growing up sturdy and strong because it's been around a lot. Yet we barely reflect on the death of an unknown deer.
Hmmm, that's human nature I guess. This makes me think back to Stephane, who may have had something philosophical to say about "domestication" in response to this. Or the fox's monologue in the Little Prince, for anyone who's ever read that.
posted by Sabrina at 2:29 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Sabrina,
I was going to write earlier that your story of the fawn dead brought tears to my eyes... and then I realized guiltily that I've yet to feel that emotional over a single dead soldier... What does that mean? That your story of the fawn made me feel like I know the fawn... but, I don't know any soldiers...???
-Shelley
August 04, 2006 4:54 PM
Yeah good point. I had a moment that kinda relates to that when I flew back home from Paris in November.
On the plane there were four guys returning from Iraq via Europe. I think they were three regular soldiers and their sergeant or platoon commander or something like that. These guys were so happy that I thought I'd never seen anything like it. They were giddier than 7-year-olds on Christmas Eve. They were more cheerful and light and almost childlike in their excitement than I had ever seen on four grown men. Why? Just because they were going home.
They also had this air of being so bonded to each other like brothers, even though two of them were black, two where white, and the commander was 15 or 20 years older than the others. It was a kind of bond and trust that we seem not to find much in regular life. It was endearing. In fact their happiness and warm comraderie was so strong it was contagious -- it seemed to cheer up everyone in the cabin.
So while watching them during the flight, suddenly the abstract "US soldier" became human to me for the first time. It was these four guys. They looked nice, not so different from some people I know. And so poignantly thankful to be going home. I realized this was a signal of how hellishly hard life in Iraq probably had been for them.
Regardless of my opinions of the war, I suddenly felt a wave of emotion. I was happy that these guys, total strangers, were going to make it home. When I got off the plane I wished them well and meant it. Maybe it was because I too was returning home after a long time gone.
Anyway, they were sort of my "deer in the yard" that woke me up to seeing them differently. Funny isn't it, how there is a parallel there somewhere between the deer and the soldiers. Well I don't want to get too philosophical. That's just my story...
August 12, 2006 1:34 PM
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