A Tale for Adults

What is to be said of this strange visitor?

With weathered wings, home to parasites and musty filth, washes up on the shores of a forsaken beach.  Is he the harbinger of death that the old woman next door predicts?  Is he a suspicious character as the Father has concluded?

I love the picture painted at the beginning of this story: this common couple is fending off the crowds of crabs seeking shelter from the torrential storm pouring outside.

This decrepit old creature of myth, lying on the shores in their backyard.  What explains this?

People flock to this couple's meager shack on this glum ocean's edge to observe the mythical beast being kept prisoner in a chicken pen.  So is he really there by force?  I somehow doubt it.  So then...why?

This is the question that kept bothering me the whole time I was reading this short story.  When the creature opens his wings in reflex, a hurricane wind is pushed from his body.  The few hairs on his head are white.  Only a few teeth reside within his mouth.

It is only at the end of the story that we receive the biggest clue about this "angel".  He makes an amateur attempt at flight.  Which means...he doesn't know how.

So...does he only have a few hairs on his head because they are the first to grow from his scalp?  Has he but a few ivories from his gums because he is just now teething?

So then...the Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is a babe, I suppose.  But why?

And that is when I remembered the rest of the title: A Tale for Children.

It reminded me of a children's film I watched recently, called Ponyo.  At first, the story didn't make much sense, but then I tried to see the story from a child's eyes...and it made so much more sense!

And so, seeing "A Very Old Man with enormous with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children" from children's perspectives begins to paint that very first portrait I loved so much in an entirely new light, with entirely new colors.

So now, as we've learned in this class, the picture must be painted again, starting from the very beginning.

"On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night..."

A newborn babe...and a newborn angel.  One sick, the other washed up on the shore.  And in the end, their baby will fly.  It will be a pain along the way, a relief at the end, and a blessing every step of the way.

Perhaps, then, this story could also be a tale for adults.