Wings

Articles

Wings

By Mark C. Durfee
May 14, 2004

Soaring, flying high and free, feeling the wind lift me effortlessly to the clouds. A body so heavy when earthbound; flying weightless through the atmosphere. Could anything be better? Could any other feeling replace this as the best thing to ever happen to me?

When did I grow these wings and why didn’t my parents have them? I heard once in a tedious biology class that certain characteristics skipped a generation; I never saw wings on any of my grandparents. I wonder, as I silently slip through the air, if maybe Grandpa Stewart, who died when I was child, may have had a pair of wings that I don’t remember seeing.

Possibly that was how he came from Scotland to Canada to the United States, flying over borders and barriers that would have kept most people home in their small village. These wings must have been from him, because although I had never seen any of the other grandparents without clothes I was relatively sure they didn’t have wings. I would have remembered them if they did. They are after all hard to hide.

Looking down as I soar over the land I see the quilt made by a hundred farmers who have turned the sod over and grow crops where there was once grass, farms pass by and down below me I see cattle and herds of sheep grazing on the green hills. A tractor moves slowly through a field tending to the business of it as I move across the sky thinking I should cry out and make the ordinary man in the tractor look up and see one similar to himself flying so high and free.

I still wonder about the origin of these wings and I think that maybe I am a freak of nature, a new thing evolved from the past as it moves to the future. My father had no wings, of that I am sure. He was smart sure but he seemed to be rooted in the earth. He went to the military as a very young man and fought a war living on the sea like thousands of others. He survived that war but I am sure it was not by flying above it. He didn’t talk much of it, but when he did he never mentioned wings that helped him through.

Not when he went to college either, he had three degrees and a few patents with is name on them but I think with all of that, if he had wings he would have mentioned them. Maybe my mother gave them to me like the head that is now going bald. But she never mentioned being able to fly either; and if she did she must have done it late at night when her five kids were all asleep.

I have wings and I want all the world to see that I am flying, that I am above the earth soaring looking down at the beautiful patterns and buildings and mountains and all of the creation of God and man that rests upon it.

No I don’t think it was my, mother who I got the wings from, she like my father seemed to be stuck on the ground. A social worker, who saw the human misery of abused children and forgotten men as they stumbled and women too poor to feed their families. Always ready with a way, a path for her “clients” to walk to meet their needs of the moment and maybe prepare a smoother road for their future. If she had wings then surely she would have been able to show them in need how to fly above it all and see the joy of creation as I do now.

Of all my siblings I never saw wings on them either. One a lawyer another a court clerk married for twenty plus years with two sons and a sister the same only thirty years to her husband with three sons and a fourth the oldest an administrator who got tired of that and went to teach middle school because she thought that would do some good.

It hits me like a rock, a passing thought that weakens the wind and causes me to start to return to earth. I find a quiet spot and land. There is a small stream and with the singing of the water as it passes over the pebbles and stones the thought builds and there is a form to it that while unfamiliar is comfortable. These people who are my family, grandparents, parents and siblings all have had and do have wings. But not all who have wings have the need to fly above some simply prefer to walk.

With that question resolved and no longer curious of where I got my wings from I rise from the log I perched on when I landed and walk away from the creek towards the road I spied on the way down.

When I leave the tree line and cross the field I see it. A beautiful chestnut horse sleek of line and strong of leg…It has been patiently waiting for me to come to her and ride. Allowing her to take me to the next place on this voyage of life.

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About the author Mark C. Durfee: 49...stopped doing what I was doing before to become an unpublished, unemployed writer.

Looking for an agent or a publisher(AAR). I have written four full length novels with a variety of themes. Email: mcd5255@hotmail.com

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