ABSTRACT
Caring manifests uniquely in each person and relationship, and is directly experienced in embodied ways, such as feelings of “security, safety, closeness and being worried about”, which are based on and grow trust. Care is understood and experienced as something good, something supportive and formative. It is also recognised as a site of power. Caring is like an improvised dance between attuned collaborators sharing the same understandings of their practice and the mutuality of their roles in it. Although ethics and care have been understood and lived through sets of fixed external duties, rules and principles, feminists and phenomenologists find care to be relational, situational and contingent. Our garlic story, like some other significant explorations of improvisation and/or playfulness begins with care in our mother/child pair. Children are not responsible for their parents or teachers, and adults have a particular kind of responsibility towards children.
