Wings, Redux

A bit over a year ago, I wrote the following. As I noted in it, it still applies this year.

I write and talk a lot about gifted folks, what it means, implications... I explore with folks the isolation that gifted kids feel. Less often do I talk about what it is like to be told you are gifted, but feel none of the flying that you know others do, to be told you have wings, but to know that those wings will never unfurl for you, never be able to support you in flight.

I have just finished Nina Kiriki Hoffman's a fistful of sky. The beginning of the book is a poem:

They open their wings,
flash patterns and colors,
fly from flower to flower.
I, with the dark bristles and many feet
of the former form
inch along the ground.

Sometimes, all I want
is two arms full of air,
a fist full of sky.

In some ways, perhaps, to know that you are supposed to have wings, and to believe that you don't and won't - or that you do, but that they allow you no flight, must feel like a greater cruelty than anything I can imagine.

Yet, I suppose it will not surprise those who know me, I believe one should know about one's wings or about the potential for those wings. And...

I believe that you can and will fly - one way or another.
*****
a post script of sorts...

I do not love you because you are gifted.

I love you and you are gifted.

In honor of the season, may I note that this applies to Christmas's past, present, and future and all the times between.

And if you wonder if this applies to you - or are convinced I cannot mean you - be sure, especially then, that I do and it does.

Wings

By Cathy Marciniak

If you could have wings would you want them?



I don't know.



If you could use them to fly, would you want them?



Yes, if I could fly.



If they would be very big. If they might brush against your knees as you

walked, might interfere with your gait, might be too large for some doorways.

And if you could never take them off?



I'd want them.



If you couldn't sit at some tables, ride in some trains. If you could never

take them off, even when you wanted to meet someone, even when you wanted to

go to bed?



Yes.



Because you could fly?



Yes, because of the flying.



If they were heavy, if they bowed your shoulders, if no one else had them.

If they made people stare, made them angry. If they wouldn’t understand that you could fly. If they thought the wings meant something else, if they didn't know?



I would know.



If you had arms, legs, eyes, ears, could speak, wings too?



If I could have them too I would want them too.



And if the flying, if that only worked sometimes. If you could only fly once

In a great while, with only those few who had wings too?



I would want them, always.



All, because of the flying?



Yes,

On account of the flying,

but also,

in honor of the wind.