I was still living at home when my parents joined The Cage Bird Society. I was 25 and was finishing my associate’s degree at the community college, hoping to start at a four year university in the summer. They had already been collecting birds for a couple of years, had turned the breakfast nook in the kitchen into an aviary. I had also overheard them talking one night over their plans for my room and what they would do for the birds when I finally moved out.
When I told my therapist this, about The Cage Bird Society, I think he finally started to get it. I thought sure telling him about how they watched The Weather Channel obsessively, showing great concern for even the storms in different parts of the country, he would have started to see it, but no, he didn’t even look up from his legal pad. But the Cage Bird Society, that made him look up, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw the recognition of something like irony.
But I had a lot of growing up to do myself, and that was the part I was missing.
My parents have gone south now, they moved to Florida, to be near my brother’s kids. They took the birds with them. Though I suppose they will die or begin to lose their faculties soon, my parents I mean. You always hope not, but my dad doesn’t take the best care of himself, and my mom’s always been a little touched.
So sometimes I still think about the man on the crane.
I thought a lot about him in my 20s, when, one night, some friends and I were in Buckhead – I don’t remember why as Buckhead was not a place we went – but I remember that night we heard there was a man nearby, and the man had walked out onto the arm of a crane.
I remember we walked a few blocks downtown to try and see him, and there he was, not all that far away, over the roofs of some shorter buildings, we could just make him out, sitting all the way out on the arm of the crane. At the time, I told myself a story about him: He was up there contemplating flight. Of course, it was reported later that he was suicidal, my dad would see it on the news and say to me: I bet he was probably one of your friends. The guy was taken to the hospital to be evaluated after the police brought him down. At the time, it felt like a huge let down. Like it was true, the world was out of heroes, and angels had never existed.
It’s not that I doubt he was suicidal – or at the very least he told them that when he agreed to come down. What else could you say when the cops come for you and you’re trespassing out on the arm of a crane? You’ll be locked up one way or another, and one way or another, you’ll have a record and a diagnosis going forward.
I do believe he was suicidal though. Going up, I think he had just about enough of this life and what it had offered so far. Maybe it was the lack of angels and heroes. But I also can imagine climbing out there to the end of the arm of that crane. It had to take a certain fearlessness to make it all the way out there. Fearlessness, which is ultimately a greater concern for someone or something than concern for one’s self – and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to die upon having that revelation.
For a long time, I imagined him rising up on the edge of the crane, taking off, and flying away from all of it.
But to deny the truth is to deny the dignity inherent both in flying and in the contemplation of flight. No, once he got up there, there was no doubt in his mind whether he could fly or not, he wanted to live – that’s why he had been so desperate to begin with.
