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Adam is small, and the world is magical. Trees are huge, and so are his Daddy’s legs, almost too wide to wrap his arms around in a hug. Adam can tuck his head against his Mummy’s neck and feel like the most precious thing on Earth, or sit on his Granddad’s shoulders and feel like a giant when his hand reaches doorframes or tree leaves. Everything is vast, and beautiful, and interesting. This is Adam’s world.
On this sunny afternoon, he’s sitting in the back garden beneath their tree, playing with a toy car and a raggedy stuffed cat that’d been his sister’s. His Mummy is digging in the garden, and Sarah, nine whole years older and really like a slightly smaller, livelier mummy, is sitting in the lower branches of the tree with a book. Adam looks up at her when she whispers his name.
“Adam!” she says, “Adam, look!”
She’s pointing up above her in the tree, and Adam clambers unsteadily to his feet, bracing his hands against the tree trunk to look up.
There are birds!
“See?” says Sarah, “There’s a nest. The mummy bird is feeding her babies!” Adam’s eyes grow wide.
“Really?” he says, craning upwards on his toes. “I can’t see! Sarah!” Sarah laughs, and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and drops her book down into the grass.
“Here,” she says, and reaches down, lifting Adam up with her hands under his arms. “Up we go!”
She lets him stand on her bent knees and holds him steady. Carefully, carefully, she helps him look once the mummy bird is gone.
The babies are featherless, pink and wrinkly. Their yellow mouths are huge in their little heads, and their closed eyes purple and bulbous. Adam’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
He reaches out a hand, but Sarah stops him.
“You can’t touch them, Adam,” she says seriously, “They’re too easy to hurt, and their mum will be upset if she smells you on them.”
He nods.
“A’Right.”
They watch until Sarah’s arms get tired holding him, and she puts him down. She goes back to her book, and Adam toddles over to tell his Mummy about the birds. Mummy smiles at him and brushes back his bangs to kiss him on the forehead, and listens as she digs her trowel in the dirt.
“We’ll get to watch them grow up,” she says. “We can check on them every day, if you like.” And they do. Sarah, and Mummy, and sometimes Daddy will go with him into the garden in the afternoon and lift him up to watch the birds. Over time, their feathers grow, and their eyes open, and they make such loud little cheeps that Adam can hear them from his bedroom. He loves them desperately. And then one day, they’re on the ground. And then they’re flying. Then they’re gone. And whenever they see another bird, Sarah says, “Maybe that’s one of them!”