Month: July 2012

Goose Envy is a common malady among less glamorous birds. Birds as diverse as the Dodo and the Greater Adjutant Stork have long wished for incarnation as a glamorous goose.

The sometimes snarky Señor Duck suffered from the malaise. Perched on top of a Corinthian-inspired pillar and having donned his handsome sombrero, he resembled a south-of-the-border hood ornament. He pictured himself, however, with elegant broad goose wings, their handsome plumage folded against his ribs, his head supported upon a great length of graceful gooseneck, rather than his own squatty cervical vertebrae.

The other fantasy that crowded his brain was Lucy. If anything could, she had partially restored his faith in Duckdom. She was the most gorgeous duck he had ever laid eyes on, with elegant, teasing feathers and a sly, pouting beak. He briefly met her prior to Lucy’s southward migration flight to Mexico last season, and he couldn’t get her out of his head.

Señor Duck was so conflicted over Lucy’s southward departure that he donned the Mexican sombrero and perched atop his Corinthian post, hoping that upon her return fly-by from Mexico his festive outfit would catch her eye, and that she would be curious enough to stop for a chat. If he got lucky, they might wind up preening together at a local pond.

He waited, waited, and waited for her return. Each time he replayed the fantasy of the last time he saw her, his fantasy grew. He could still imagine her noble and strong silhouette against the dawn’s first light of her Southward departure.

So there he sat with his own private thoughts, wishing his appearance were more handsomely goose-like, and despondent not to be reunited with Lucy, flown to Mexico.

Throughout his long weeks waiting for Lucy, he did not recognize that as he sat, his wings had atrophied, growing weaker with each passing day and month. The skin on his feet grew pale and brittle from disuse. The world waddled painfully and slowly beneath his unmoving limbs.

During the most disappointing times, fantasies are all we can hold on to. But the trouble with fantasies is that they are a record of realities as we once perceived them, not necessarily the current state of affairs. They are manufactured dreamworks—realities as we want them to be, but not as they actually are.

The Lucy of his fantasies never did return; the Lucy who eventually did come back was not the same gorgeous Lucy that had left for Mexico.

Instead, she returned as a mother duck with a handsome drake alongside her. Her once-glamorous feathers were now worn and faded from the long flight and the strain of raising ducklings. She had a new purpose in her eye—the mellowed purpose that experience gives.

But sombrero-donning Señor Duck had not waited for her to return. A few weeks before her migration return from Mexico, he had stretched his withered legs from on top of his Corinthian post, spread his atrophied wings, fluttered to the ground, and started gingerly waddling.

The time alone on the Corinthian post had gradually mellowed his fantasies. The strain of trying to become more goose-like had eventually helped him to accept himself. The more he viewed the silhouetted profile of himself perched upon his column, the more comfortable he had become with it. And Lucy—well, he figured that she probably had gone on with her life also. They had both changed. He gradually squeezed shut the door to his fantasies, took a deep breath, and leaned forward.

The fantasies—those things that never really should, could or would have happened—gradually faded like dark shadows, bleached away by the dawn.

Testing his withered but strengthening legs, Señor Duck began reclaiming his own best possible destiny, one step, two steps, three duck waddle steps at a time.

His rehabilitation therapy at the hospital was the easy part. Figuring out how to make do with part of his body missing was the hard part.

Adapting to life as a damaged soul would be this soldier’s next battle. Still, he felt strong and up to the task, except, that is, for the fuzzy, lightheaded glow he felt whenever his nurse made her rounds.

The infirmary held his wounds together, and soon, as he healed, she held his heart together with her hand on his. He had lost his leg to the war; he lost his heart to this woman, now so long ago.

Then, with her own unforeseen illness, the hospital held them both, long florescent corridors distancing them from one another, her leg also lost now so long ago.

After their release from the corridors, the doctors were unsure how much more time they would have left to share together.

So they moved their fast-track courtship from the hospital floor to the dance floor, balancing the uneven steps of their imitation legs with a slow-motion waltz, their limbs lost long ago.

The winds that finally blew out the flames of the exhausted war served to fan their love. Gradually, unexpectedly, their years together gathered and grew; they savored each one as a welcome, precious gift.

And on each side of their bed every night, their wooden legs rested like attendants ready to serve, faithful companions to replace their limbs lost long ago.

When at last his life had run its course and later, when her life had done the same, they carried her carefully from their bed.

Then, gently, they brought out their wooden limbs, where every night of their lives together they had been carefully laid by the bed, patiently awaiting the next day’s dawning.

Now they, too, like the soldier and the nurse, would remain together, limbs lost long ago.