During a visit to their grandmother’s in Keelung, Formosa, about ten years ago, my two children watched a little bird learning to fly from a treetop on a hill a few feet behind the house. A sudden gust of wind blew the bird toward the house and, when the wind died, it fell onto the roof terrace right in front of my children. It tried to fly back to its panicking mother but its wings were not yet strong enough to give it the momentum it needed to fly from a lower to a higher level.

My mother-in-law picked up the poor creature and, cupping her hands around it, lightly threw it upward; the bird landed safely by its mother’s side. Then, turning toward the three humans on the terrace, the two birds nodded and chirped in unison a few times, as if to say “thank you.”

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