Compassion

We walked along a beach on the island where we lived, my mother and my father with my sister on his shoulders. I saw it and pointed. I did not know what it was, floating on the breaking waves. My mother squinted, then broke into a run. I ran alongside. It was a girl in a bright swimsuit. My mother and I pulled her from the sea, onto the beach, and there we did what we could. Others came to help. Sixty years ago, I came to understand that a mother’s love, a mother’s compassion, can touch the entire world.