The Whale (and my fear of intimacy)

The whale hung delicately from fishing line and hovered over three child sized desks waiting to be seen by mother. The whale was made of gray paper mâché and about 4 feet long and a couple feet wide. The efforts of myself and other students — this whale was the creation of wild children with artistic souls. The concept of a whale floating in mid-air sent us into laughter and brought us joy at the absurd thought that we could, with our little hands, make it real.

For the first time, at least for me, I realized that the abstract ideas in my own mind could take shape and I was inspired by the whale.

The whale was a mighty effort of little children. The mess of the glue and the ink of the paper stained our hands and would not come off in our bedtime baths. We dreamt of the whale and how to bring him to life, how to put him in mid-air, like a trapeze artist hanging from invisible cables. Like baby architects, each day in the classroom we would gather together to workshop our ideas and apply them to test them.

The sticky, inky, hollow thing eventually took a whale’s shape. Tail, fins, belly, eyes, mouth, teeth. Finally, we applied paint, and the masterpiece was complete.

Carefully, we stood on our desks and strung it up from invisible line. The flying whale, an idea of children, brought to life!

I was proud and stepped back with the other children to admire it. We all erupted into laughter!

“He can fly!”

“Silly whale, what are you doing up there?”

The bell rang and we all ran home to tell our parents about the magic flying whale. Parent’s night was right around the corner, and it gave us an opportunity to tell tall tales at dinner about him. The legendary flying whale of Rm. 220.

The whale hung like a heavy grey-blue angel and beckoned for worship.

His belly held my own desire to be worshiped too. My desire to be seen, loved, appreciated, and praised for my authenticity. The indigo child, the color of the whale, free spirited and imaginative. I was not used to admiration and lived in a fantasy brought about by an early loneliness that bubbled from a cauldron of alcohol. I looked forward to introducing the whale and like the whale, I would stand suspended, but not by fishing line, but in a moment of love I knew existed but had not experienced.

Parent’s night came along for me and the other children. Hundreds of parents and children filed from room to room to meet teachers and admire the work of their children.

As parents and children marched from room to room in a scattered and lively cadence, I spoke of the whale. I told my little brother and sister about him and reminded mother to not forget to go see him.

As twilight fell and the evening turned to night, I became silent about the whale. Maybe I was talking about him too much because mother had passed Rm 220. She went to the kinder room and doated upon the baby and his finger paintings and to my sister’s classroom although, with not as much enthusiasm, she flipped through drawings and handwritten stories.

Like the whale, I was suspended in expectation and need.

As we wandered past Rm 220 one last time, I pointed to the whale in the window of a now dark classroom. In the darkness , he was absorbed. Mother also was absorbed in a darkness although, of what, I still don’t quite know.

We drove home and I cried silently in the back seat. I wasn’t unaccustomed to tears but, that night, a reality was setting in for me.

The next day, the children put their names in a hat for a drawing to determine who would take the whale home. The child that was drawn could hardly wait to go home and hang the wonder whale in his room.

I declined to put my name in the hat and went and sat silently in a corner to look at that damn whale one last time. The whale who consumed me and then spat me out like the story of Jonas in the Bible. His vanity, and my need for admiration, as elusive as a flying whale so far, was proof that hollow bellies hold only fantasies of love. It was on that day, that I turned into a cactus- hollow inside like the paper mâché whale, with a thorny jacket no one could embrace.