I love my kids for lots of reasons, but one of the foremost of those is that all three of them have kind hearts. It seems to me that "it's how kind you are" defines your humanity...as Philip K. Dick once wrote. I saw a flash of that kindness one day when my daughter and I saw a bird hit by a truck.
We walk every day, and our usual course takes us down a section of Whipps Mill Road. There are no sidewalks in our neighborhood, but there's a fair amount of separation between you and the traffic on the one side of the street, as there is a parking lane, a skinny no man's land lane, and a bike lane, so it's as pedestrian safe as you can be under the circumstances. Still, the cars whizzing by definitely catch your attention, and as we were walking one day I looked up as a large truck blasted past us...and saw its grille smash into two birds who weren't flying fast enough to get out of its way. One of them was thrown into our path and landed hard on the asphalt. I saw its claws extend futilely before it died. Jacqueline immediately rushed towards it, saying, "We've got to help it!" Alas, there was no helping it. But as disturbed as I was by seeing a bird die right in front of me, and as sad as I was that my daughter was there to witness the event, I also immediately felt love and pride for her. Her first impulse wasn't revulsion or fear, but the desire to help.
She has a diagnosis of autism. Would that we all were as "handicapped" as she is.
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