“One day, you are going to fly so high. Up, up up, my little sweety boy!”
The father opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a sharp voice barked out, “Stop it!” William turned around to see the nurse standing in the doorway, anger clouding her features. Mr. Wright was embarrassed, but felt relieved that support had come from an unexpected source.
“That is strictly forbidden. When you arranged to give birth here, we explained that we are not one of those flighty, new-fangled, birthing institutions. We are a serious medical facility providing the most modern healthcare available.” The nurse strode over to the bedside and attached a harness to the wings. It was a complicated piece of equipment and had been developed at great expense by one of the biomedical giants specifically for this new epidemic. She swaddled the baby and carried him away to the nursery. The mother watched him leave, and, feeling the cold emptiness in her arms, began to cry.
Her husband held her hand, feeling awkward and out of place. “It will be okay. This is the best hospital in the state. We agreed that this would be the best choice for the baby.”
The mother was not appeased. “I was never happy with this choice,” she said through tears. “All that fancy equipment just makes it more expensive and none of it seems designed with a baby’s welfare in mind, only their own ideas of what is best. Whose best? They treat our baby like he is sick, or malformed. His tiny little wings are so cute. Did you see him trying to fly?”
Her husband winced. “Yes. We’ll deal with it when we get him home.” He hesitated, afraid to ask. “Have you thought of a name?”
She smiled. “Tori.”
The father nodded, strangely pleased. The name reminded him of the conservatives from American history, prim and proper. He was a bit perplexed when he saw the tiny wrist band labelled, Tori, spelled with an ‘i’ and not a ‘y’. Had he known that in Japan, his newborn son’s name meant “bird”, he would have put his foot down. Though he continued to spell his son’s name with an ‘i’, his wife kept that disappointment hidden from him while she dreamed of herons, painted in sweeping strokes, flying over Asian landscapes.
The child grew as an inevitable result of living and breathing, eating and sleeping, but childhood is more than a greenhouse for the body. The alchemy of parenting creates stranger results than gold from lead, and the crucible that was his home burned with a quiet intensity. The father dressed his son in a suit tailored for an earthbound reality, but it pinched the boy in ways the father could never understand.
William brought home a bat and ball, but Tori was slow and awkward. Remarkably gifted at being a non-athlete, the boy was always caught staring at the sky when he should have been watching the ball. The father’s optimism was admirable, but it was entirely based on flawed logic. The shelves were filled with books, junior science and math trainers, exercises meant to train the budding genius. But the books were never opened. The father’s lofty dreams never reached as high as his son’s.
The mother had her own hopes and dreams, different than the father’s. Hers were born from watching her child grow. She decorated his room with pictures of birds; flocks of every type were pictured on the wall, and a mobile of sea gulls traced lazy circles over his bed. It pained her husband and he tried to explain why such things should be discouraged for the sake of the boy. She was a dutiful wife, listening to the logic of her husband, but a mother’s heart sees what a father cannot. In her heart, she would change the world, rearrange heaven and earth, rewrite the entirety of human history, if it could bring one smile to her child’s face. The father was more focused on his son making a way for himself in a pre-existing world he was born into, a simple cog in a functional machine.
In due time, the boy arrived at the grim door leading into the office of the school superintendent, the gateway to manhood guarded by the rigors of pedagogy. Here there were clear rules based on traditions leading back to the beginnings of human culture. It was time for him to leave behind his toys and take his place among the ranks of men. His father sat proudly next to him with a smile bolstered by fond memories of multiplication tables, tests successfully completed, and thick, books conquered by a young mind. His mother was also by his side, watching her son as he looked out the window, following the paths of starlings as they flew in circles high above the playground.
The superintendent shuffled papers on his desk, putting them aside as if a judgment was about to be handed down, for indeed that was how he viewed his job. “Everything seems to be in order. So many parents err, thinking all that is required of them is to package their child, drop him on our doorstep, and pick him up in twelve years, educated and acclimated, fully prepared to face the demands of the cold, cruel world. The educational system is a well-oiled machine, the pinnacle of human achievement, but even we have our limits. The machine must be tended, the fires must be fed, for human progress to move forward.” He paused. The delicate subject had to be addressed, but how? He chose to face it as he did all pedagogical dilemmas — head on, rod firmly in place.
He cleared his throat and slapped his hand on the desk. The boy’s eyes flickered, leaving the window and facing the stern man beginning his well-practiced sermon of indoctrination to serve as both admonition and expectation. “Young man, our school is an ancient and revered institution. Education has always been an endeavor fraught with difficulty; in our day, even more so. We aren’t here to pamper you or tolerate any nonsense. One day, in the not-so-distant future, you will be expected to take your place as part of society’s glorious machine. There are basic skills and tools you need to learn and it is our duty to provide you with. It is time to put your crayons and finger paints aside.”
The boy nodded numbly, making it clear that he had heard the words of the speech but not their meaning. The superintendent sighed, realizing that he was going to have to go into embarrassing detail to get his message across. “There are schools that attempt to accommodate exceptional students. That is to say, students with unique, shall we say, unusual needs. It is our confirmed opinion that this puts an untenable load on the system and does a disservice to the child. The purpose of education is to prepare you for life and that means being able to fit in, no matter how unusual you are.” The boy nodded, his blank stare fanning the flames of the man’s discontent. Angrily, he stood up, moving from behind his desk to loom over the seated child. He put a stern expression on his face and positioned his hands on his hips.
He pointed one stubby finger at the little boy. “No flying! Do I make myself clear?” The sudden fear in the boy’s eyes gave him the satisfactory answer he sought, and so he returned to his desk.
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