Wings Not Made of Wax 7 comments

By Lindsey Crittenden

A few years ago, the Writer’s Almanac featured as its daily poem Muriel Rukeyser’s “Waiting for Icarus.” I printed it out, pushpinned it to my bulletin board next to postcards, photographs, return-address stickers from charitable organizations to which I’ve never given money, and the service receipt for my new Sears Kenmore sewing machine.

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together, the first line reads, and in that first line Rukeyser establishes the ground rules of the poem, ground rules any reader who has ever been promised something can recognize. We know, without being told, that “he” didn’t come back.

He said that everything would be better than before.

We’ve heard that one, too, and some variation on the following:

He said all the buckles were very firm / He said the wax was the best wax / He said Wait for me here on the beach / He said Just don't cry.

I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer, Rukeyser’s poem ends. I would have liked to try those wings myself. / It would have been better than this.

I’ve known—and fallen for—men like Rukeyser’s Icarus, men who talk of plans and make promises and fly away. One, in particular. In spite (or perhaps because) of the flimsiness of his promises, the softness of his wax, his departure devastated me. Left waiting on the beach, I too enshrined my abandonment as something beautiful, as though it had the last word on my destiny.

In time, the heat of anger subsided, the devastation of betrayal burned less. I continued, some days, to flinch at the too-harsh sun but no longer lingered on the beach watching the horizon.

But I kept the poem on the bulletin board.

Months passed. Years.

One day, the lectionary took me to Luke 12: 13-21, in which Jesus chastises the rich man who builds bigger barns for his grains and goods and tells himself all will be fine. “You fool!” Jesus has God say to the man: “This very night your life is being demanded of you.” Jesus concludes, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

“Rich toward God”—so often, my first association goes to not giving more to the food bank, to my as-yet unfulfilled intention to help adults learn to read at the library. And then I justify myself through the checks I write, the food I give to the guy outside Walgreen’s, the peanut-butter-and-apple sandwiches I handed out last December along Market Street.

Prayer helped me see that to be “rich toward God” doesn’t mean only doing good deeds, though that can be a start. No, it means not to hoard my gifts, material and otherwise. My default, when confused or hurt, is to go off alone. Not to build a wall as much as to retreat behind the wall I’ve been building my whole life. To stay on the beach, ruing. It would have been better than this.

Love gone wrong opened me up by cracking me open—as did grief, depression, anxiety. These unbearable periods softened me into a more empathetic, compassionate person.

Yes, but still a lonely one. I tried to keep my lamp lighted: “This very night your life is being demanded of you.”

One morning, I had a dream so powerful and pungent that it felt more like a visitation, a glimpse of the possible. In the dream, I woke with a man’s arms around me. I felt utterly at home, utterly complete. The bliss filled me as I opened my eyes on the gray light of early morning and then, with the realization that I’d been dreaming, desolation filled me. How could I get up, go about my day, knowing so viscerally now what could be and what was not? It would have been better than this.

This. I was familiar with longing, well versed in keeping it dormant. I decided not to. You see, I knew the man in the dream, saw him every week at Bible study. For months, I’d been drawn to his mind, his sensitivity, his idealism. I’d been listening for references to women in everything he said, from describing his weekend to commenting on the legacy of St. Augustine.

I began wearing lip gloss and mascara on Wednesday nights, as well as skirts that ended at the knee. I snuck sideways glances at his hands, at the back of his neck. One evening, he walked me home and, after we hugged each other, I unlocked my door thinking, Hm. And yet I told myself that the hug—so solid, so close—bespoke nothing more than his kindness and integrity, our growing friendship. He smiled at me in our weekly group, but he smiled at everyone else, too.

And then our group spent a weekend away. On Saturday afternoon, several of us went for a hike. C and I lagged behind the others, talking the way people do when what is in the air begins to feel inevitable and mutual. We stopped in an old orchard, where gnarled apple trees covered in moss and lichen bent crookedly over long damp grass. Someone had built a gate, but no fence surrounded it, and we stopped there. I played with the latch, opening and closing a gate serving no obvious function, and we laughed about the postmodern implications.

By Sunday night, we drove back into the city together, and a few days later, as he stood next to me, I took the Muriel Rukeyser poem down from my bulletin board. It no longer seemed right. It’s a true story, a sad story, a story I will always know. But it no longer has the last word.