Now that I make the frequent arrivals and departures of a child who grew up and moved away from his parents, who grow older and sicker and smaller between visits, I feel too sad to read while I wait for boarding to start and instead head up to the gates that are no longer used because the city has also shrunk, and I see this little survivor who was here the last time I left and the time before that, feathers drab as the well-trodden carpet but happy, I’d like to think, in its world of fries and burger buns, not lost, not half regretting what must have been a decision to thread itself through an open door into a life it could not imagine and away from one it could not manage for long if it ever had to go back to it again.