C.C. is cleaning the garage and so I move my car onto the street. It’s about the most help I can provide given my back is still ‘fragile’.  As I come down the street and wait at the corner for a van to pass before pulling a u-turn to park in front of our house, I notice something fall onto the pavement across the road from our house. It looks like a bird and I wonder if it was hit by the van that just drove by.

When I get out and cross the street to see, I discover it’s not one bird but two. What looked like a large bird flapping on the ground is actually a momma bird frantically trying to get her chickadee to fly. Momentarily, as I approach, both birds lift up and fly, but quickly crash back to the pavement. Frightened of my presence, the momma bird flies up into an overhanging tree branch. She clings to the branch, hopping from one stem to another, squawking furiously to her child on the road to fly away, fly away, fly away.

I call for C.C. who comes out to help, but as he crosses the road, a van pulls up the curb and a woman gets out. In her hands she’s holding a plastic container with a lid.

“It just flew straight into my windshield,” she says as she approaches where I am standing beside the bird. C.C. bends down and picks up the chick. It is breathing. There is blood on its beak. It’s tiny heart is thumping wildly in its chest.

It is so tiny. So delicate. So fragile. So beautiful.

“I came back so we could take it to the SPCA,” the woman says. In the backseat of her van a young boy sits watching us, his eyes wide. “I promised my son we would take care of the bird. “She pauses. Looks at the tiny body lying in C.C.’s hand. “I didn’t think she’d fly straight into my window. they usually dart away when you drive by. I didn’t realize it was just a chick.”

And she tells us of rescuing a hummingbird at their cottage. “I didn’t think it would live, but it did,” she says.

And I am grateful.

And I am sad.

She will take care of the chick.

But we can’t do anything for the mother who has not stopped her incessant squawking in the tree above us. She is frantic.

There is nothing we can do for her. Nothing we can say.

We have no choice but to put her chick into the plastic container and let the woman take the chick to the SPCA.

And I wonder about the momma. Even if the chick makes it, will they ever be reunited? Will she ever see her child again?

I try to talk to her in the tree. I tell her we are trying to save her chick, but she flits to a branch further away from me, her fear of humans real and palpable.

And the woman drives away with the chick and the momma bird stays in the tree and we return to our backyard.

It only took one moment for a bird to fall from the sky. And in that moment, its life was made different at the intersection of its world with our human existence. The woman could not have avoided contact and in the end, she did the right thing, the only thing she could do that would make a difference for that young chickadee. She rescued it.

And still, my heart is heavy. My heart knows a mother’s heart is broken when her chicks fly from the nest and fall. And even thought my heart knows the only difference we can make is to help them get back up again, I wonder how that mother’s heart will mend.

I watched a mother bird desperately try to get her chick to fly after it crashed to the earth yesterday. I heard her entreaties, watched her frantically try to get her chick to fly again and I was reminded of the fragility and the sacredness of our lives and the sacred trust that is the bond between mother and child.

We are all like that little bird learning to fly free. Sometimes, we fall. And when we do, sometimes what we need most is a helping hand to get us back up again.

As you go through your day, are there people you meet who only need a gentle touch or soft voice to help them fly? Share what you can and know you are making a difference.