Of Egrets and Elephants
I went looking for community. I found a dog, a bird, and an elephant. Not all at once.
When I was thirteen, we had this English teacher who would stride into class each morning, balancing her spectacles on her head (and often forgetting they were there), and declare, with mock sternness, that we were the bee’s knees. She said it so often it became her daily refrain, something we rolled our eyes at but secretly loved.
She was sharp with her grammar and ruthless about us enunciating our words, but she also left me with a gift: the wonder of alliteration. She showed it to us one day like a trick, words tumbling together, and I latched onto it hard. I wrote entire pages of teenage musings stuffed with strings of words that sounded alike.
For months I crammed alliterations into everything. Secret diaries full of “sad, sullen Sundays,” short essays that read more like tongue twisters than critical thinking. I think it was partly a game, but also an anchor.
When the braces cut the insides of my cheeks, when crushes never noticed me, when acne clung stubbornly to my face, and even later, when the braces came off but left behind the small gap between my teeth that still gives me a slight lisp - everything felt raw and awkward. Alliteration was my small way of ordering the world, of finding delight in patterns when little else made sense.
Even now, I catch myself leaning on the rhythm of words. Of egrets and elephants. It’s nothing, really, and yet it’s enough to make me stop, smile, and feel briefly anchored, a reminder that patterns can still hold me when little else does.
One such glimmer arrived on the Heath. A tiny brown dog bounded up out of nowhere, tail wildly wagging, tongue lolling. Before I could react, he leaned his weight into me, then flopped onto his back, waiting. I laughed and scratched his belly as he settled into my lap, fur matted, paws brown from all the running around, the grass pressing damp against my knees. For a few minutes, it was as though we had always known each other.
And then he was gone. No collar, no name, no human companion, no sign of where he had come from or where he went, bounding off before I could even realise.
Later I thought about how that moment held me, a hug from a stranger with four legs, muddy mittens, and no intention of sticking around. He left as quickly as he arrived, probably off to chase a squirrel or sniff out his next adventure. But the weight of him stayed with me. Not friendship, not family, not permanence. Just a silly, brief anchoring, like he’d dropped a twig into my lap for the nest I’m still trying to build.
When you’re a child, belonging works differently, and feels easier. The nest has often been built for you: parents, cousins, aunties, neighbours, teachers. A loose weave of hands that holds you without asking. You just sit in it.
But as you grow older, the seams start to come apart. Some hands slip, bits fall off, and you realise the nest has to be made again, and this time you’re the one weaving. And it takes longer. Finding people who will hold you is slower, harder. You try to stitch yourself into routines, friendships, work. The world moves fast, people keep their calendars full, and sometimes you wonder if there’s space left at all. Sometimes the fabric just doesn’t hold.
I found one such stitch by a pond.
On one side, people poked at what looked like small pebbles with sticks, some sort of genteel sport that seemed to belong in a Jane Austen novel. On the other, a cricket championship was in full swing, loudspeakers rattling, supporters waving flags, commentary booming across the field.
And in the middle, the pond sat still. That’s where we noticed the bird.
“Crane,” I said, too quickly.
“No, can’t be. Maybe a pond heron. Or something else.”
“Egret,” I tried. They shook their head. “Not here. Maybe a little stork?”
“At this distance it could just be a duck or a pigeon,” I said, squinting.
We laughed and went on like that, names thrown out like breadcrumbs, some half-serious, some ridiculous. All the while, the bird hopped and dipped at the water’s edge, unbothered by us.
We could have missed it, distracted by cricket commentary or the strange Victorian sport. But for those few minutes, all we cared about was naming this one bird. As if pinning the right name on this bird would stitch us more firmly into a place that still felt foreign. The truth is we didn’t know. The truth is maybe it didn’t matter. But for a moment, the guessing itself was a thread.
I think that’s how belonging works in a new place. You reach for references, you stitch together the unfamiliar with scraps of the familiar. Even if they don’t fit. Even if the bird doesn’t answer to any of your words and flies away before you’re sure.
And then there was the safari jeep. Eight of us jolting through the forest, binoculars raised at first, cameras ready. But as time dragged on, and the jeep slowly crawled forward the way they always do on safari, slow enough not to scare whatever might be watching us back.
As time stretched, attention slipped. Someone checked their phone. Another asked what was for dinner back at camp. The forest blurred into background.
That’s when we saw it. A dull brown mass in the trees, almost invisible. I kept watching. Slowly, it revealed itself: the shift of a leg, the curve of a tusk, the sway of a trunk. A tusker.
No one else in the jeep noticed. And then, for the smallest second, he lifted his head and looked back. The air felt heavy, the chatter fell away. He was there, I was there. That was enough.
And then he folded back into the forest, disappearing into the trees until they were just trees again.
In the last few weeks, these are the twigs and seeds I’ve somehow ended up pocketing.
The weight of a dog in my lap.
The squabble over a bird neither of us could name.
The tusker half-hidden in the trees.
Tiny, ordinary things that could so easily have slipped past me, but maybe they are enough.
Maybe they are what start to line the nest.
I think back to my English teacher sometimes. How she drilled us in patterns of sound. Back then it was just play, a way to distract myself from braces and breakouts. Oh, and that gap my braces could never fix, which still whistles when I’m not trying and sprays s-words when I am. Not exactly ideal, but maybe a thread. Floss, really, if we’re staying on brand.
But maybe she was teaching me something else: a discipline of sorts. The ability to take tiny, awkward things and let them stand as anchors.
Maybe belonging isn’t about permanence.
Maybe it’s always this: fragile, provisional, stitched from twigs and other small bits that don’t look like much, but you gather and collect, and don’t throw them away.
Call this the first bundle of twigs in the pile. Here’s to seeing what else I find.
More to come, soon.
Thank you for being here.