Her wings were clipped long ago. Her song shushed until she forgot how to sing. Blue skies and gentle breezes replaced by bars. Oh, she could see beyond her cage, but she was never able to do more than look, wish and hope. And for a very long time, she didn’t even have hope.
Her keeper wasn’t cruel. He met her basic needs of food and water. Sometimes he placed bright, shiny objects in her cage. She could barely remember another life, a life without bars, a life of freedom. Sometimes on the edge of sleep a distant memory would arise, amorphous and disintegrating, fading into the ether before she could grasp its meaning.
The years passed.
In the fall of her life a shift occurred. Although her cage had been placed beside a window for most of her captivity, she had never paid much attention to what went on outside the large wall of glass. Why would she have? Her keeper had trained her well. Her life, her protected life, her fed life – that life was in her tiny cage behind those bars. If she didn’t have her keeper to take care of her, what would happen?
One day, for a reason unknown, she decided to peck at the clasp which held the door to her cage closed. To her great surprise, the clasp moved, and the door swung open. Timidly, she perched on the rim of the open door. Deep inside a voice whispered, “You can do this.” But she was afraid.
Her keeper appeared. “What a naughty girl you are” he admonished as he latched the open door. Chastened, she withdrew to the center of her cage.
Many days passed before she tried again, but that inner voice, the voice of those memories, compelled her forward. She began to exercise her wings, to move them about, and discovered that they hadn’t really been clipped. It was the years of confinement that had convinced her otherwise. Then she began to sing. Not much at first, but more and more as she gained confidence in herself.
She began to change, and on a beautiful summer day she freed herself and flew away.